The Viennese waltz

Take away the casual jeans and tee and broad grin and Christoph Edelbauer could be your regular office-goer. But instead of a stuffy cubicle, he works in a building with wraparound glass picture windows and a barrel room cooled by environmentally friendly earth tubes in Kamptal, about an hour out of Vienna. The view is wonderful: rows of vines stretching as far as the eye can see. To me, he exemplifies the young Austrian winemaker today; proud of his heritage, his terroir, and working almost single-handedly to produce small quantities of very good wine.

“I wanted to use my hands in the vineyards,” Edelbauer, an architect by training, tells me. “It’s hard work, but I like to be involved in every part of making my wines. I’m happy with my 12 hectares.”

Young, passionate winemakers with small landholdings, such as my host on this sunny day, are one way Austrian wine is rebuilding its reputation after the 1985 antifreeze scandal. Thirty years ago, the industry was decimated when it was discovered that some unscrupulous producers had been adding diethylene glycol to their wines for extra body and sweetness. Since then, the Austrian wine industry has struggled to get its due on the world stage. But it is now producing exceptional cool weather wines with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and is very proud of its own local grape varieties: Zweigelt, Blaufränkisch, St Laurent and Grüner Veltliner.

Edelbauer’s winery in Langenlois is young, having produced its first vintage as recently as 2003. The aromatic local grape Grüner Veltliner comprises about 45% of his harvest; besides, he grows the Riesling, Burgundy varieties Pinot Noir and Chardonnay along with Sauvignon Blanc (exclusively for sweet wines). His flagship wine, though, comes from the local red grape Zweigelt.

“My first vintage consisted of just three barriques (small barrels),” he laughs. Today, Edelbauer sells 40% of his production in Austria and exports small batches to discerning buyers in Europe. He vinifies his white wines in steel tanks and his reds in 500-litre Austrian and French oak barrels.

Austrians have a tradition of drinking their wine young, even today when so many winemakers are making stunning, age-worthy wines. “It’s an Austrian phenomenon,” Edelbauer acknowledges. “I agree, if you leave these wines for a couple of years in the bottle, they’re more interesting.”

He generously opens eight bottles for me to taste, from a young Grüner Veltliner, very light and refreshing, to delicate Chardonnays, fruity, elegant Rieslings and the Reserves. Edelbauer’s wine labels are striking: Silk-screened directly on to the bottles, the neat scribbles in white on the stark black background are his own tasting notes for the vintage.

Another Grüner Veltliner, a Reserve 2006 from the boutique winery Rudi Pichler, Wachau, is our choice at dinner that evening at Steirereck, Vienna’s only Michelin two-star restaurant, housed in an impressive art nouveau-style building in the lush green Stadtpark. The wine’s distinct minerality and superb structure will cut across the different flavours and textures of the six-course tasting menu, I think as I order. The sommelier agrees, and we are set.

Listed at No.15 in S Pellegrino’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants, Steirereck’s chef Heinz Reitbauer is noted for his innovative take on traditional Austrian cuisine, which in turn is a reflection of age-old food traditions drawn from the different ethnic groups who inhabited the region. Each course is accompanied by its own little description card, which allows diners to savour and recall each ingredient they eat. We start with a quirky dish called “Allergies”, bites of 14 top allergens, from duck egg in the half shell to milk skin and crustaceans. If that’s not daring, I don’t know what is!

The courses that follow are as memorable: A wild boar’s head in aspic with spices, pineapple mustard and raw purple haze carrots (anaerobically fermented with salt and lactic acid for 14 days, my card says) and tardivo radicchio; a roast rabbit with pineapple sage, barbecued asparagus, preserved loquats and green hazelnuts—a sophisticated take on the Austrian love for hearty game meats—and a pan-fried basil and lime-marinated reinanke or whitefish, a tender-fleshed lake fish popular in the lakes near Salzburg, which is served with white radish and Cox’s apple in a preserve of rice wine and dried lime, reduced pepper juice and a sharp essential mustard oil. Each dish is a take on the local Wiener küche or Viennese cuisine favourites: Austrian cuisine is dominated by game as well as beef, veal and pork. Offal and pig trotters are considered delicacies.

As important, though, is the place accorded to bread. While much of it is sweet-fermented, the schwarzbrot, a dark rye bread, is traditional. The Steirereck bread trolley does magnificent justice to the practice, coming laden with 30-odd artisanal breads, including honey and lavender bread, sourdough pain Poilâne and apricot-hazelnut bread. I choose a slice of the popular bacon loaf—did I mention that the Austrians love their pork?—and fall in love with the chewy black pudding bread.

Austria’s many lakes and rivers make fish a popular staple. And this is well-reflected in Steirereck’s signature dish: a delicate fillet of char, a freshwater fish of the trout family found in the mountain streams of the Austrian Alps, which is cooked in beeswax and unplated at the table, and served with marinated yellow carrot, juice of jellied carrot and apple and a dab of sour cream with cayenne pepper and lime, strewn over with quince vinegar “pollen”. A visual delight too, with its luminous orange and translucent yellows.

Cheese in various forms is popular, and is produced in many regions, from soft quarks and cream cheeses used in cooking to the piquant Mondseer. To finish, my husband picks a selection of cheeses from the almost-groaning cheese trolley. I decide on a gentler option: “fresh cheese” similar to a creamy quark, so popular locally, but sweetened with crushed vanilla pods and served with preserved and dried/crushed physalis and a frozen cheese whey sorbet with toasted hemp seeds, black sesame, amaranth and coconut. The delicate flavours are almost Asian in their complexity.

To wrap up is the prettiest dessert: Spring blossom and herbs spritzed live with a bitter orange-blossom perfume, laid on a linden blossom honey tuile and, as a counterpoint, served with bitter orange blossom and yogurt ice cream. The gorgeous flowers—begonias, violets, nasturtiums and honeysuckle— are a riot of stunning colours with tiny cubes of violet jelly and sprinkled pollen. Almost too pretty to eat, and as sophisticated as the city.

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SWEET VIENNA

Almost every dessert in Viennese cuisine has a romantic history. The four you must try:

Sachertorte

A dense, rich, dark chocolate cake layered with apricot jam, this is not for the calorie counter. Have it with a cup of Viennese coffee in the café of Hotel Sacher.

Confiserie Vienna, Hotel Sacher, Kärntner Str 38, 1010 Vienna.

Kaiserschmarren

A Viennese pancake, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and served torn in pieces topped with plum jam. As simple as the sachertorte is rich.

Café Landtmann, Universitätsring 4, 1010 Vienna.

Viennese Apfelstrudel

Made with apples, cinnamon, raisins and breadcrumbs and encased in a crisp, airy filo pastry, apfelstrudel dates back to the 17th century. It’s served with vanilla cream or ice cream.

Café Central, Herrengasse 14, 1010 Vienna.

Linzertorte

Considered the oldest created tart in the world, the linzertorte is a lattice-topped hazelnut pastry topped with raspberry jam. It’s made during the Christmas season.

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