Vintage Austria

Eight years ago, as I was leaving northwest Italy to drive to Austria, at least three Italian winemakers gave me the same address in Vienna: Vis-a-Vis. This minuscule wine bar, tucked at the end of a narrow alley, was a wonderful find. Standing at the bar, you could taste not only most of the great wines of Italy by the glass, but also the top wines from Austria, virtually unknown outside the country’s borders at that time.

Owner Hans Weibel, a wine fanatic if ever there was one, began my Austrian wine education with a glass of an entrancing, bone-dry, minerally Riesling from a place called the Wachau. Just an hour’s drive west of Vienna along the Danube, this is the premier region for dry white wines in Austria, he explained as he handed me another glass, this one a crisp white with a scent of green apples and white pepper. I had never tasted anything quite like it--made from Gruner Veltliner, the Wachau’s other major grape. These were wines with the unique character and finesse that can only come from great vineyards combined with great winemaking.

I was so intrigued that I rented a car and set off to see the Wachau (pronounced, roughly, va-HOW). Although it’s close enough to Vienna for a day trip, the Wachau makes an ideal two- or three-day excursion filled with vineyard strolls, visits to winemakers and leisurely meals at country restaurants. The region is also part of the well-known Danube Bike Trail, which extends from the German border town of Passau all the way to Vienna.

The Wachau follows a tiny portion of the Danube, about 20 miles, where the winding river carves out a steep, narrow valley between the 1,000-year-old market town of Krems and the Baroque splendor of the Benedictine abbey of Melk (the inspiration for Umberto Eco’s novel of medieval intrigue, “The Name of the Rose”). Along the way are a string of medieval and Renaissance villages with half-timbered houses and steeply terraced vineyards that sweep down from the hilltops to the wide, meandering river.

The name Wachowia first appeared in a deed signed in 830, but vines have been grown here since Roman times. The north bank of the Danube is a patchwork of small wine estates where the indigenous Gruner Veltliner as well as riesling grapes are planted on steep stone terraces, in some places just one or two vines wide, built between the years 1000 and 1300. The best individual vineyards (called Riede) at the tops of the slopes were known for producing extraordinary wines as far back as the Middle Ages.

The wine villages of Unterloiben, Joching, Weissenkirchen and Spitz are close enough together that it’s easy to walk or bicycle between them. There’s also a ferry that plies the Danube, and small boats take travelers from one bank of the river to the other. Gardens of rambling roses and flowering vines, set off with potted palms, oleanders and fuchsias, seem more Mediterranean than middle European.

The two most beautiful seasons to visit the Wachau are spring, when the apricot trees are in bloom, and fall, when the leaves begin to change color and the grapes are harvested. I’ve done both and would be hard pressed to choose between the two. When I went back recently, I found the Wachau just as unspoiled as it was on my first visit eight years ago. The big difference is that now these wines have been recognized as not only some of the greatest in Austria, but among the greatest dry white wines in the world, nothing like the inexpensive German-style Rieslings most Americans are more familiar with. It’s possible to find them on wine lists at top restaurants both here and in Europe. (In Los Angeles, Campanile, Spago Beverly Hills and Patina, among others, feature wines from the Wachau.)

The production, however, is quite small: Only about 4,000 acres of the Wachau are planted with vines. Wine estates such as F.X. Pichler in Unterloiben, Emmerich Knoll in Joching, Franz Hirtzberger in Spitz and Prager in Weissenkirchen have become the most renowned, and their best wines are sold out almost as soon as they’re released.

Years ago it was a different story. Vintners often had trouble selling all their wines, so many of them opened wine taverns (Heurigen, pronounced HOY-ruh-gen) or restaurants where they served good regional cooking. A few wine taverns still exit, and two of the best country restaurants in the area are owned by winemaking families.

The first stop on my itinerary from Vienna is always Mautern, on the right bank of the Danube. The oldest wine village in Austria and the gateway to the Wachau, Mautern was the site of an early Celtic settlement that predated the Romans. In fact, the Nikolaihof estate makes its well-regarded Rieslings on the site of an old Roman cellar, which you can visit. At tables set in the shade of a towering linden tree in the courtyard, Cristina Saahs serves typical regional food with her husband Nikolaus’ wines. Breads, hams, sausages and jams are all homemade, and all the produce, like the Nikolaihof wines, is organic.

Mautern is also home to the stellar country inn Landhaus Bacher. Lisl Wagner-Bacher, the sole woman among Austria’s top chefs, is joined in the kitchen by her daughter Cristina. Husband Karl Wagner directs the dining room (along with daughter Susanna) and a stupendous collection of Austrian and Bordeaux wines. Wagner-Bacher cooks like a dream. She garnishes rich clear broths with miniature meat strudel, tiny biscuits and other surprises. I relish her Tafelspitz, the traditional boiled beef served with apple horseradish, and her Zander (pike-perch) in a delicate Riesling sauce with young cabbage and spaetzle. In the fall, she cooks up wild mushrooms and game from the Danube woods. In warmer weather, she shifts to more Mediterranean ingredients. This is really beautiful cooking, definitely worth a detour.

Stay at Landhaus Bacher’s cozy 20-room guest house, just across the garden and furnished with pine armoires, plump duvets and simple luxuries like good reading lamps. Breakfast is a sumptuous spread of soft-boiled eggs, smoked ham, wonderful rolls and breads and homemade jams. If you show an interest, they’ll help arrange visits to Wachau winemakers.

On the other side of the river is Krems, which was known as Urbs Chremisa as early as 995. Ancient capital of the Wachau wine trade, Krems--and its twin city Stein--has an old quarter, most of it a pedestrian street lined with richly ornamented Renaissance and Baroque houses painted in luscious shades of coral, clear green, mauve and peach.

But most visitors head straight for better-known Durnstein to the west. Encircled by its medieval walls and towers, this pristine town has not one but two castles. The first, a ruin on the hilltop, is where Duke Leopold V of Austria held England’s King Richard Lion-Heart prisoner in 1193 after they had a falling-out during the Third Crusade. The second is Schloss Durnstein, built in 1630 for the princes of Starhemberg, and now a romantic castle-hotel furnished with antiques. Breakfast is served on the broad, tree-shaded terrace overlooking the Danube. The outdoor swimming pool is shaded by the canopy of an old linden tree; an indoor pool is carved out beneath the castle.

To best experience this lovely region, you have to get out on foot or bicycle along the paths that follow the river. Paved bicycle lanes run parallel to the road, through the trees or vineyards, sometimes skirting the river. At the foot of Durnstein, small boats ferry travelers (and their bikes) across the river to Rossatz, where paths along the riverbank offer great picnic sites with a view of Durnstein and its blue-and-white Baroque tower. A small open motorboat also makes a half-hour circuit up and down the Danube. And the larger ferries that ply the Danube stop to take on passengers. You can ride from Durnstein up the river to Spitz or Melk, for example. Or you could bike along the wine road, stopping for lunch along the way, and then take the ferry back to Durnstein later in the afternoon.

On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from April through September, you can visit the 18th century villa and incredible maze of cellars belonging to Freie Weingartner on the outskirts of Durnstein, one of the best wine cooperatives in the world and a historic one: Growers have been bringing their grapes to the same spot for hundreds of years. Their range of Wachau wines offers tremendous quality for the price. I particularly recommend their Gruner Veltliner Federspiel and their Steinfeder Terrassen Thal Wachau.

The neighboring wine-growing village of Oberloiben is home to F.X. Pichler, a fourth-generation winemaker and one of Austria’s top vintners. The Knoll family estate in nearby Unterloiben sells most of its wines at their own enormously popular restaurant. Set in a sprawling 400-year-old house with individual wood-paneled dining rooms, Restaurant Loibnerhof also has a large garden carpeted in soft grass with tables shaded by fruit trees. Chef Josef Knoll turns out unfussy Austrian cooking with soul; his wife, Margareta, is the pastry chef. I love the chopped veal (Kalbsbutterschnitzel) with yellow boiled potatoes. Catfish is another good dish here. Call ahead to order a roast duck straight from the oven, served with potato dumplings and red cabbage sauerkraut. More original is his wonderful fish Bosel, a rich soup of carp innards and roe topped with buttered croutons. For dessert, try the light cheese dumplings dusted with cinnamon and served with deep-flavored stewed apricots.

In Joching, Josef Jamek, a pioneer in making dry wines in the Wachau, runs the busy country restaurant Jamek with his wife, Edeltraut. It’s a stately yellow house with a series of cozy dining rooms. The best seats, though, are out on the sunny terrace, where you can enjoy the whole series of Jamek wines with regional cooking. They’re known for their carp (Karpfen gebacken) fried like schnitzel and served with potato salad, and their smoked sausage (Saumeiser). Don’t miss her famous Kremschnitte (butter-cream cake) or her rhubarb compote in a marzipan crust. Jamek’s 1997 Riesling from Ried Klaus Smaragd has all the life and minerally notes of a grand cru Chablis.

If a sun made of woven straw, or a branch of bay leaves, is hanging out in front of a winery, it means it is also a wine tavern, a casual spot to taste the estate’s wine along with a sampling of cold cuts and homemade dishes at moderate prices. Among the best of these informal Heurigen is Johann and Monika Schmelz’s in Joching. The wines are excellent, especially with a feast of home-smoked meats, cured venison and boar, earthy sausages and homemade pa^te, along with an array of local cheeses served on wooden platters. For dessert, Frau Schmelz makes her mother’s Grapplestrudel with a filling of jam and pork cracklings. Since Heurigen are run by working winegrowers, they are open only sporadically when there’s no more work to do in the vineyard (the dates are usually posted on the door). Hotels will call ahead to check for you.

My other favorite restaurant in the region is Restaurant Florianihof in Wosendorf, set in an old abbot’s house that dates from 1320. On warm days, eat outside in the walled garden decorated with hydrangea, oleander and topiary. I had a wonderful lunch of duckling soup scented with nutmeg, and suckling pig with two fluffy potato dumplings. But I kept stealing bites of my friend’s schnitzel and a potato salad made with creamy yellow potatoes and the perfect balance of vinegar.

It’s also worth a visit to the tasting room of Rudi Pichler, a fifth- generation winemaker in the same town. Trained as an economist, Pichler was inspired to come back and work the family vineyards after a visit to California wine country. His wines are among the best in this part of the Wachau, particularly the complex, beautifully structured Achleiten Riesling.

The town of Spitz marks the end of the vineyards. Nestled at the foot of “Thousand Buckets Hill” (so called because in a good year the vines produce that much wine), the town’s narrow, cobbled streets are flanked by restored Renaissance and Baroque houses. Last October I took a walk up into the steeply sloped vineyards to see the renowned Singerriedl vineyard and found Franz Hirtzberger and his wife, Irmgard, harvesting with a handful of workers. Neighboring Willendorf is famous as the site where the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf was found in 1908. Now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the stout 4.4-inch-high stone figure is thought to be about 35,000 years old and, if so, proves that Wachau was inhabited as early as the Stone Age. At Aggsbach Markt, a base for mammoth hunters in the Ice Age, the 16th century Wachau architecture and a striking late Romanesque church are worth seeing. And here, as at several other places along the river, you can catch a ferry to cross over to the right bank of the Danube at Aggsbach Dorf. The views from the road up to the eerie blackened stone ruins of Aggstein, a 13th century fortress on a steep crag above the river, are the draw here.

Our ramble ends at the great abbey of Melk, one of the masterpieces of Baroque architecture in all Europe, which looms like a dream ship over the town below. Founded in the 11th century, the abbey was extended and rebuilt in Baroque style by master builder Jakob Prandtauer in the first half of the 18th century. Tours take visitors through the richly ornamented church and chapel and through private areas of the vast monastery. The library in Eco’s “Name of the Rose” is modeled after parts of the abbey’s historic library, which contains 80,000 priceless volumes and manuscripts.

I’ve never found another wine region with such history, incredible wines, sublime landscape and soulful food. The fact that it has museums, coffeehouses and Baroque architecture--and is just 40 miles from Vienna--makes it all the more mysterious why this enchanting region is so little known.

S.I. Virbila is The Times’ restaurant critic.

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GUIDEBOOK

Vining and Dining in the Wachau

Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Vienna, but Delta, British Airways, KLM, Lufthansa and Swissair have connecting service involving a change of planes. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $882. The Wachau Valley region is 40 miles west of Vienna, or about a 50-minute drive.

Getting around: Ferries go from Krems to Melk, with stops along the way. An all-day, round-trip pass is about $18; a one-way ticket between, say, Krems and Spitz is about $7. For information, contact Blue Danube Schiffahrt in Vienna, tel. 011-43-1-588-800.

Where to stay: In Mautern, Hotel Landhaus Bacher is a comfortable 20-room inn run by a top Austrian chef; double rooms $110 to $150; telephone 011-43-2732-82937, fax 011-43-2732-74337. In Durnstein, the Hotel Schloss Durnstein is in a castle with 38 antique-filled rooms, swimming pools and a terrace restaurant; tel. 011-43-2711-212, fax 011-43-2711-351, Internet https://www.schloss.at, e-mail hotel@schloss.at; doubles $169 to $292. Also in Durnstein, the Richard Lowenherz has 38 rooms in a former convent overlooking the Danube; doubles from $135 to $154; tel. 011-43-2711-222, 011-43-2711-22218. In Weissenkirchen, the Raffelsberger Hof inn has 12 rooms; doubles $92 to $123; tel. 011-43-2715-2201, e-mail raffelsberger@magnet.at. Tourist offices have guest house lists.

Where to eat (prices below are for dinner for two without wine, but tip is generally included): In Mautern, Landhaus Bacher (see above), $100 to $175; and Nikolaihof, a wine pub/restaurant, tel. 82901, $23. In Unterloiben, Restaurant Loibnerhof, tel. 82890; $50 to $70. In Wosendorf, Restaurant Florianihof, tel. 02715-2212; $50 to $60. In Joching, Josef Jamek, tel. 02715-2235, $60 to $80.

For more information: Austrian National Tourist Office, P.O. Box 1142, Times Square, New York, NY 10108-1142; tel. (212) 944-6880, fax (212) 730-4568, Internet https://www.anto.com.