For the wine tasting, it is not necessarily to go to the luxurious chateau. In Autumn when the grapes become ripe, the Viennese vintner will present their new made wine this year, at the cabins all around the vineyards on the hill. People come here, meet friends, drink the new wine, enjoy the scenery, and also exercise during the hiking.
In Autumn, grapes become ripe along the Danube. In the weekend of Sep 26-27 this year, the Viennese vintners set up the cabins everywhere on the hill full with vineyards. It is a good time for friends to meet and have some fun together. Hike up the hill, and enjoy the wine with different flavors from different vintners on the way. This weekend is called “Vienna Wine Hiking Day.”
⬇️ hiking trails marked by red lines, wine taste cabins marked by red glasses
Around Vienna, there are about 700 hectares of vineyards and more than 190 vintners. There is no other big cities which can be so convenient to access wide vineyards and freshly made wine. For example, the tram line 38 ends at Grinzing. Only after one minute walking up to the hill, we can see vineyards everywon the rolling hills.
⬇️vineyards on rolling hill
I found it interesting that the German word for Vienna - "Wien", is so similar with the word "wine". It almost looks like that when someone drunk too much wine, then wine is misspelled to be "Wien".
Walk along the path towards the top of the hill, we saw many cabins like the below image shows, then we know, aha, it is the place to take a break and have some wine.
⬇️cabins selling wine in vineyards
On the way, we saw many people in traditional Alps style costume. Women's clothing is called Dirndl. The feature is that the top and waist is tight, but the skirt is inflated, with a length to the knee. Also there is an apron in the front, usually with bright color. This style was originally from the working women's dresses, but the upper classes started to adopt it as high fashion since the end of 19 century. In "Sound of Music", Maria's dress is also in this style.
Traditional men's clothing is slightly less conspicuous: "Lederhosen"-leather shorts. Also originated from the workers in Alps. The leather material is stronger than cotton, so better for hard work, and the knee-length is convenient for moving around.
⬇️A couple wearing traditional Alps costumes
The clusters of grapes on the vine look really beautiful, and tasty. There are much more green grapes than purple grapes in Austria, on both types and quantities. Purple grapes caught my eyes easily. But the green grapes are not easy to notice, as they have similar color with leaves.
⬇️purple grapes
36% of the grapes in Austria are Grüner Veltliner, a type of green grapes. It is likely those green ones I saw on the mountains is also Grüner Veltliner. The grapes themselves also taste very good, soft and juicy. But because they have many seeds, they are not common to be sold as eaten grapes.
⬇️green grapes
Although above photographs show many green grapes and purple grapes covering the branches, most of the grapes on the vineyards have been collected already. Otherwise we will not have fresh wine to drink. But some grapes are left on the vine, even though some of them have already been too ripe, and some flesh have come out from the grape skins, spreading a nice smell. It took me a long time to find the origin of this nice smell.
These grapes are kept for a reason. By selecting grapes with different maturity levels, wine with different flavors can be made. For example, to make ice wine, the grape harvest has to be delayed, until the grapes experience being frozen and thawing several times.
⬇️vines, wine, people
Although the cabins supply wine and rest place, but there are no hot meals. Because in Austria, a license will be needed for selling hot food. Cold food does not require a license, so we can order some smoked meat or cheese, to go with drinks.
The higher we hiked, the better scenery we can see. Also it is crowder on the cabin at the top of the hill as people enjoy the view there. We can see not only the vineyards, but also the Vienna city, and the Danube river at the foot of the hill.
⬇️ a nice wine taste place with wonderful view
⬇️a church on the top of the next hill
According to the vintners, the wine production this year is not very high, but in very good quality. Why? Because this year there are several hot tides in Europe, each reached almost 40 °. But each time it only lasted for ~two weeks, and then there was a rain in the interval time. This kind of weather will not cause drought, but it will not give the grapes too much water either. If there are too much rain, the grape will be more juicy and less sweet, the sugar composition will not be enough for making good wine.
There cabins not only sold wine, in fact they supplied various types of products on different stages during wine making: Must (juice), Sturm (fermented grape juice), Heuriger (new wine) and normal wine (more than one year of aging). As a technology fiend, of course, I will not miss this great opportunity to understand the brewing process.
technology time
How do the grapes become wine? The first step of course is to remove the stem, and make juice. The freshly squeezed grape juice from the vintner is very delicious.
Now we have electronic machine to make juice out from fruits, much easier and more efficient. In former time, the vintners had to do it manually, but of course with some tools. Below photo shows a juice maker in eighteenth century, now as a decoration at one wine vintner (and also a restaurant) on the foot of the hill.
From the information online and my guess, I think this wood juicer works like this: a barrel of grapes was put on the right bottom, where the white stone stays now. The barrel should allow liquid to go though. And there is another container under the barrel to collect the juice. Then a wooden lid will be screwed up to the "T" shape peg above the barrel, so that people can move the lever up and down to press the grapes. The screw on the "T" shape peg is used to adjust the fine position of the lid therefore tune the pressure.
⬇️eighteenth century juicer
After pressing, the juice with flesh and peel will be fermented together. The color of the wine comes from this step. In a simple word, green grapes make white wine, purple grapes make red wine. The color comes from the anthocyanins and other pigments on the skin. So if the purple grapes can be quickly peeled, before the flesh is fermented, white wine can also be made from purple grapes.
The beautiful rose wine with pink color, can be made by controlling the time length of the purple grapes fermentation. Another way is to blend the red wine and white wine.
If only slightly fermented, the wine is called "Sturm" in Austria, the English of which is "strom". The reason is simple, semi-fermented wine is very cloudy, like the clouds before a storm.
Because the sugar has not fully decomposed, the sturm tastes very sweet, it is easy to forget how much you drink and then drink more than one should. My mother often makes rice wine for my father at home. She and I both like the semi-fermented unfinished rice wine more, which is also very sweet. So when I drunk sturm, I tasted the home flavor. This time of the year, we can also find sturm in the fridges at supermarkets. It is a bit tricky to store it: it needs to stay in fridge, but with the cover open a bit, because the fermentation is still going on, gas is being produced.
⬇️Comparison between finished wine (top right) and sturm (bottom right)
Continue to ferment until all the glucose are decomposed, then the wine can be filtered, put into glass bottles and sent to markers. There wine are called "Heuriger" -new wine. I compared the tastes of new wine and one year old wine. The difference is very obvious. The taste of new wine is very "simple", with an unchanged flavor. The one year old one has a richer taste, the feeling when you first drunk it might change after a few seconds, more interesting. No wonder why everyone loves wine after certain time aging. Generally aging has more effect on red wine than white wine.
But it is not necessary that the older the better for wine. After a certain period of time, the effect of aging becomes very minor. So a lot of wine in the cellar will be sold after the appropriate time. Only a handful of excellent quality wines are worthy of collection and preservation.
Because there are more varieties of green grapes in Austria, the types of white wines are much more than red wine, and probably better quality. Italian and French are more famous in red wine. Finally, the Vienna wine is very cheap. With only a few Euros, one can buy a bottle of good white wine from supermarkets.
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