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Sunday 1 November 2015

Domäne Wachau - The Tour

A tour of Domäne Wachau with Kerstin Klamm

A special occasion took us back to Vienna for a short break; so we decided to accept Roman Horvath's invitation to travel up the Danube to the pretty village of Dürstein and a tour of Domäne Wachau.

Outsize bottles in the visitor centre
Domäne Wachau is a co-op with around 250 growers, but not all the wine is blended - soil profile of the single vineyard sites
The bottling line - strangely hypnotic
The Kellerschlössl - built by the monks in the 1600s when they ran out of room in the monastery
The vines
The Kellerschlössl ghost (part 1)
The Kellerschlössl (interior) - now used for weddings and functions
The cellar - with bottles back to 1947 (everything previously was consumed by the Russians during occupation)
1969 is an especially good vintage - the bottles are 70cl and feature a "halo, gifted by an angel"; humidity gets up to 100%, so wine labels (and other things) deteriorate very quickly
Austria's foreign minister conducted the post-war negotiations down here
The Kellerschlössl ghost (part 2)
The old telephone
Big butts - the best wines are fermented in 2-3 year-old oak
The cellars extend around 1km in total - and at this time of year, there is the gentle plop-plop of wine fermenting
Some experimental wines - three barrels of fortified Riesling (plus three of fortified rosé)
A trainee cellar-hand scraping crystals off the barrel
Other related articles
Terroir and Vintage in Austria's Wachau Valley with Domäne Wachau
Domäne Wachau Beerenauslese Terrassen 2008

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