FIRST SWEET STEPS

Never know what you'll see in an Austrian field!

FIRST SWEET STEPS    

Unless you can get yourself to a tasting, you’ll have to fund your first steps into sweet or dessert wine. And quite a few of these can be
expensive and then you may not like it!

I think you will like it and there is an inexpensive way to experiment. At your local Aldi. They are selling an Austrian one. Don’t be surprised. Austria is between Germany and Hungary, two countries well known for their dessert wines.

Indeed, this Aldi effort is produced in Burgenland, Austria’s easternmost federal state and home of the famous steppe lake, the Neusiedlersee, which has a long common border with Hungary, the home of the very famousTokaji wines.

 Burgenland Austria Sweet Pradikatswein is on the bottle label. Prädikatswein is a quality wine that has undergone a particular type of harvest and maturity. And Beerenauslese, also on the label, means the wine is made from overripe grapes and or grapes with noble rot. 

Austrian wine publicity: These sweet wines are rare, characterised by their residual sugar sweetness, highly concentrated acidity, and often with the incomparable aromas and flavours of botrytis cinerea. Burgenland, with its extraordinary microclimate around Lake Neusiedl, almost seems as if it was selected especially for the creation of these wines.

This particular bottle is quite a nice introduction to the species and indeed a  decent substitute if you can't get your hands on one of the big names such as the French stars of Sauternes, Saussignac and Monbazillac.

It has velvety-fruit aromas and flavours and it sweetness means it will go well with blue cheese, terrines of foie gras, pate and chocolate desserts. Try it with or just after your Christmas pudding.

Because they are so sweet, these wines are usually sold in either 375ml or 500ml size. This Aldi one is half the normal size. No need to fill the glass to its usual level either! But, of you do like it, have a second! In any event, the experiment will have cost less than 6 euro! Similar size Sauternes would cost more than double that.

A real Austrian vineyard