The Friday wine ritual (with the usual suspects) and always something from Austria!

Every Friday…almost……I participate in a ritual where I and some of my contemporaries gather at a co-conspirator’s wine store on Milwaukee’s chic east side on the even chicier Brady Street called Waterford Wine. http://www.waterfordwine.com/

There the usual suspects arrive with one or more bottles to open and taste, and comment about (and hopefully sell) and compare. Eventually the room is full and more bottles are being grabbed from the shelves with cries of “Let’s open this one! I’ll buy it!!!!!”

Somehow I got the nick name of T-bone. Hhhhmmm, and it has something to do with the fact that I swear profusely but I am not sure what the connection is. All I know is that when I took umbrage with the moniker, and then I peppered the sentence with a few mf’s and other dainty utterings, my friend said, “see… T-bone!”

Everyone nodded as if they knew what he meant and I pretended that I did also. Oh well, I guess I am now and will always be T-bone. At least I get to taste some fabulous wine that I wouldn’t have the chance to taste if I weren’t…..well…. T-bone, I guess.

Here is what I dug out of my very cold trunk last week:

Feiler-Artinger Umriss Blaufrankisch 2004 Burgenland Austria

This is a single vineyard wine crafted with the grapes from the Umriss vineyard, which has a chalky, dry soil that imparts wonderful spice in the final product. Through rigorous selection, only very ripe grapes are used.

This was a wonderfully full and lush wine with notes on the nose of allspice, boysenberries, anise and slate. On the palate there were ripe blackberries, bright plum and hints of baking spices telling me that the oak was well integrated. The finish on this went on and on, it was stunning. It actually sat in my trunk for another couple of days and I took it out and tasted it again with a friend and it hadn’t changed with the exception of being somewhat softer.

Blaufrankish is a great food wine as it has higher acidity, bright fruit and with time silty tannins. When well made it has a lush mid palate that expands beautifully. It is known as Lemberger in the US, mostly Washington state, and Kekfrankos in Hungary, one of the varietals used to make Egri Bikaver along with Kadarka and Kekoporto.

Another Austrian stunner I had tasted with my friends:

Hogl Ried Schon-Viessling Gruner Veltliner Smaragd 2006, Wachau Austria

Nicely balanced for such a big, full-bodied wine, with white pepper spice, hints of slate and a texture similar to the typical Alcasian oily / lychee thing. Fruits were almost tropical with mango and apricot skin. There were some baked-apple notes suggestive of the warm vintage and had a long subtle pepper finish.

The vineyard it comes from is terraced and faces south-southwest. Only Gruner Veltliner is planted here, and the vines per hectare are very high due to the extreme slope of the vineyard. Here are used only old vines with small grapes that will yield ripe grapes even in colder years.

“Smaragd” is the name for full-bodied wines given by the Vinea Wachau Nobilis Districtus, a distinguished collective of regional vintners. It translates to emerald, the color of the lizards that run amok in the vineyards.