Schloss Gobelsburg: philosophical investigations on the pleasures of Gruner Veltliner

“Then I brought up this question: When you say, Men do desire pleasure, what is this use of “pleasure?” Is it contrasted with pain? Pain is localized, for instance.

He went on with one of the nicest bits of analysis I heard… He started: Pain is a sensation. Pleasure is not. Why are the senses classified together? Obviously they are not a bit alike. Smells, odors, aren’t a bit like sounds. Then he gave this account. With respect to all these, you can time them precisely with a clock. “Now you see; now you don’t. Now you hear it; now you don’t.” By the clock you can tell. Now pleasure isn’t like this. The logic of the word pleasure is quite different. Clock the pleasure. When did the pleasure begin, when did the pleasure end, etc?”

“Wittgenstein conversations 1949 – 1951”, p 63, Oxford. Wittgenstein

Each Gruner Veltliner I have tended to taste is often so demanding, different or weird that I approach this Austrian grape as I would a hard soduku puzzle, slightly exhausted by the idea of the pleasure. It is a puzzle: in Austria, the spicy white is an everyday wine enjoyed in the same way as Chardonnay; but, here, Gruner Veltliner is still an exotic treat.

Schloss Gobelsburg is a benchmark in the Austrian style of Gruner Veltliner, so I joined the customers of Berry Bros & Rudd in their St James Street cellars ready to test my assumptions.

Like all outstanding winemakers, Michael Moosbrugger has done all the philosophical hard work for you; what is left in the glass is pure visceral pleasure. The Schloss Gobelsburg vineyards in the Danube had been owned by the monks since medieval times and the power of contemplation continues.

Each wine is like a philosophical answer to a question.

One of the questions he posed: How much can a winemaker really reduce manipulation of the wine? Can a winemaker really do nothing – does the terroir really speak for itself?

To test his question he went back to the Schloss Gobelsburg monastic wine library to look at how wine was made before 1850 and the industrial revolution. Before then, a winemaker had the same ideas for making wine that existed in Ancient Roman times. In Roman times, wine was based on the Platonic idea of breathing and oxygen. Wine was an organic thing, an embryo that needed to grow and breathe with periodic moments of oxygen to bring the wine to life. The winemaker was only a midwife. Today with modern technology and understanding, the philosophy in the cellar is more about protecting the aromas and reducing fragile components: which results in a wine that is cleaner, streamlined and fresher.

The answer to his theory: 2008 Gruner Veltliner, Tradition. This is wine made in the pre-industrial style. Compared to the other Gruner Veltliner wines we tasted, this wine was deeper gold in colour, richer and more savoury. It had an incredible depth but already seemed more developed than other Gruner Veltliner shown from the 2009 vintage.

For the people at the tasting, the 2009 Gruner Veltliner, Lamm was the favourite. From volcanic and sandstone soils it had a very refined palate, peppered with floral notes. Precise and completely in balance like an expensive watch. But it was the 2009 Gruner Veltliner, from the region of Grub, that really held my attention: like an abstract cologne of white pepper on the nose with fresh fruit on the finish. It had a distinctly modern, abstract, cool personality as if it belonged in the museum of modern art. I admit this will not be to everyone’s taste, but still, very thrilling.

Prepared for Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, I came away from the night with the impression of the shimmering gold of Klimt. Pepper. Yes there was strict pepper, but also a lush golden character. Ending with the incredible sweet wine, 2008 Gruner Veltliner Eiswein, tasting of caramelised pear with amazing aged Comte cheese characters, only confirmed my belief that great Austrian wine can be an intellectual as well as a pure sensual pleasure.

The tasting ended at 8.31pm, but the wines shined well into the dark, rainy night.

Food matched: Wild Mushroom & truffle strudel, Herb spaetzle with Gruyere fondue, Fois gras parfait on toasted brioche, Weiner Schnitzel with sauce gribiche, Austrian sausage with mustard.

Images: "wittgenstein illustration 2nd reading branch, 1973" Mel Brochner; "Adele Bauch-Bauerm 1907" Gustav Klimt

Thank you to David Berry Green, Berry Bros & Rudd and winemaker Michael Moosbrugger for the opportunity to taste these incredible wines from Schloss Gobelsburg. Tasted 16.02.11.

How to do the new austere: a baby Barbaresco

This is how to do the new austere well: with a light, baby Barbaresco style wine from a near-abandoned region in Piedmont. Beautiful perfumes and tight tannins somehow make austere seem rich.

A fabulous wine yet with an honest country heart: violet, roses after rain, stewed cherry, and fresh-smelling wet forest twigs and gun shop, the expansive feeling of the perfume slowed down by refined tannins, like stopping on a mountain path to take photos of a richly-coloured sunset with a super-sharp lens.

From a once thriving wine-region 1-hour drive North-West of Milan, vineyards deserted in the 1950s for the textile industry, the Colline Novaresi DOC is in the highest and most eastern part of Piedmont. This is made near the town of Boca from the Nebbiolo grape which gives the wine a beautiful pale colour and perfume, also seen in expensive Barolo and Barbaresco, but contains up to 30% Croatina grape, a local variety which gives a violet colour and tannic quality slightly deeper than Dolcetto.

Three word review: Dramatic Luxury Lite

La Maggiorina Le Piane 2009 (Colline Novaresi DOC, Piedmont) from Lea & Sandeman, £12.95 per bottle

Top 5 Wine Posts for 2010

Jump for stars!! Find the Princess! Dodge the King! Like a Super Mario, Wine Woman & Song grew twice in size this year to take on extra hits and new worlds. Here were the highest-scoring Fire Flowers from 2010 (this year's most-read posts):

The Self-Assembler: Hofstätter Pinot Bianco, Alto Adige

Alongside a glass of champagne or a cab ride in the rain, a good bottle of wine is one of life's affordable luxuries. Yet low-key, easy luxury is the most difficult thing to achieve; partly because it involves an element of effortlessness.

Fifth Dimension: Movement in Taste

It's a fact that when you are truly dehydrated, the impulse for thirst in the body shuts down. So you never really know if you are dehydrated even though you desperately need water. In a similar way, sometimes with wine, you don't know a good one, or the idea of what that may entail, until you have one.

dark sunglasses required: sexy Sicilian wine

There’s a stuffy image to the wine industry. It’s where middle-aged men with cigars who imagine themselves out every night patting strippers on the bum between glugs of Bordeaux as they discuss wine like stock prices.

Sicilian wines are not for them.

There’s also the people who go to the supermarket on the way home from work, get home and perfunctorily open a bottle to watch television for a few hours before going to sleep to do it all again the next day.

Sicilian wines are not for them, either.

Sicilian wines are

TROPPOOOO BUONNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

New Wave: Kooyong Estate Farrago Chardonnay

In the same way as the sculptor Constantin Brancusi sculpted this piece in 1910, the Farrago Chardonnay from Kooyong Estate is spectacularly modern. Kooyong Estate winemaker Sandro Mosele has been peacefuly innovating on the Morninton Peninsula near Melbourne under the radar and turning out classic modern masterpieces.

To say this wine is defined by its minerality is like saying the above sculpture of Brancusi's Sleeping Muse is only defined by its smoothness.

supersonic: Mac Forbes' 2006 Woori Yallock Pinot Noir

Terroir

A good friend from Australia told me a story. After the Hospice de Beaune Auction in Burgundy he had driven down to the Rhone Valley. While there, he managed to cajole the reluctant Rhone winemakers to take a quick drive with him to Piemonte as it was “only a few hours drive over the mountains”. At first, the idea shocked the Rhone winemakers. Italy?! For my Australian friend, it was nothing, not even the distance from one Australian capital city to the next. They did it; and to this day, the winemakers from Rhone, Piemonte and Australia laugh about it and are all still friends.

Controversial Freisa: why this is an important wine varietal

“They can be fussy, unreconstructed; most of them don’t want to go along to get along. They have an attitude, an edge.” – Randall Grahm, Preface to Wines of Italy, Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology

There comes an evolution in the taste buds when tasting wine and that can be summed up in one word: bitterness. Bitterness is an acquired taste. A five year old does not like bitterness. Did you ever mistake a cold bottle of Indian Tonic Water with Schweppes Lemonade on a hot summers day as a child?

What is a 'vino da meditazione'?

I love reading wine tasting notes in Italian. I always want to sing it back. For example, What is a vino da meditazione? It's an intriguing term often seen in Italian wine notes.

It looks like the word "meditation", but it's not quite.