We stopped at the Steininger tasting room on our way back to the hotel. Birgitta Steininger speaks English, so she sat with the four of us at a long table and chatted over a couple glasses of their fabulous Sekt. I think we had the Sauvignon Blanc and the Gruner. She was just delightful. After we drove the rest of the way to the hotel and I had a shower and a twenty minute nap before making my way back to the lobby. We were meeting at 5:30 to head to Anton Bauer's for dinner, but I went down twenty minutes early to try and send a quick message to the b.h. and my parents. I was greeted two minutes after sitting by K@rl Steininger, who handed me yet another glass of bubbly. I abandoned my iPh0ne and made some attempt at conversation. Soon his daughter Ava arrived, as well as some of my cohorts from the tour group. We tried the Pinot Noir Sekt and chatted for awhile before loading into cars and going to Wagram.
Ant0n Bauer sounds like Alan Richman in the first Die Hard movie. He is as sweet as can be, but he's a big guy and German always sounds angry anyway, so I found the whole night pretty comical. He and his wife Gudrun have a lovely house and a really nice tasting room, and they were generous enough to make dinner for all of us that had arrived early (which was most of us- 15 people, I think). Ant0n kept opening bottle after bottle and making rounds around the table. This was prior to the official start of the trip, you understand, so I was taking no notes and since I hadn't slept in around 30 hours, so I can't tell you most of what we had. What I can tell you is that I refused grappa (made from grapes from the Bauer vineyard) and was given a stern once-over. I did touch each of the three to my lips from the glass of a guy next to me, but I wasn't about to let them pour me two ounces of valuable liquor that I had no intention of drinking. Each of the three tasted distinctly like burning to me, which is also why it would have been wasted on me. After a few hours of this, many of the other people in the group were getting pretty tipsy. I was mostly dumping out my wine after tasting a few sips, due to the aforementioned lack of sleep.
We walked through the winery itself and tasted samples from barrels that were still aging. The room that had all the barrels in it smelled absolutely fantastic. I don't feel like my palate is sophisticated enough to determine whether or not the young wines would develop well or not (I'm sure they will- the guy is a genius), but it was a cool experience nonetheless.
Round about eleven o'clock (on the second day in a row that I was awake), Klaus rounded up most of the group to drive them back to the hotel. There was not enough room for all of us in the two vehicles that were available, so some of us would have to wait with the Bauers while he shuttled the others and then came back for us. That would be another forty minutes. I was in that group. I almost started crying. Klaus smirked as he was walking out the door and winked at me, saying
"You'll thank me tomorrow!"

I slept like a corpse, waking early and feeling pretty good. I popped down to the heated outdoor pool for a swim, then took a shower before going to breakfast, which was a giant and gorgeous buffet of everything I have ever dreamed of eating for breakfast. I ate heartily, drank some delicious and restorative coffee, and headed for the bus. The bus took us into Vienna, where we stopped for our first official tasting at a beautiful hotel downtown. We were joined there by the last three people to arrive. They were from Boston, and had chosen to spend the night in Vienna after arriving the day before. There was a thirtyish guy that I liked immediately, and a twenty-something gay guy wearing far too much cologne, plus a forty-something woman who was such an obvious fag hag (whoops- I believe the PC term for that is now "fruit fly") that it was weird and a trifle embarrassing. We tasted through eight wines from Strauss. They were outstanding. I remember specifically my notes on one of them were that I would like to wear it as perfume. After the tasting we walked around Vienna for an hour or two. I kept lagging behind, snapping pictures with my camera, and then jogging to catch up with the rest of the group. I got a lot of great photos, we saw a lot of cool things, and it was nice just to get out in the fresh air.

For lunch we went to the vineyard of Paul D, a winemaker who is half my age and doing impressive work. His mother looked nearly identical to Sar@h P@lin, and she went around the table quizzing all of us about what we do and where we are from. When the guy next to me said Denver, she said "Denver? Do you know J.R. Ewing?" He didn't miss a beat before responding "Yes I do," despite the fact that J.R was on a teevee show called Dallas, and for that I immediately liked him. Austrian Sarah Palin made her very own Apple Strudel for us, and I finished mine embarrassingly quickly and then helped Denver with his because she was chastising him for leaving some on his plate.

We got a brief respite at the hotel, followed by more glasses of Steininger Sekt in the lobby, followed by an incredible Sekt (bubbly, in case I didn't already explain that) dinner at the Steiningers. We toured the bottling plant, each disgorged our own bottle of Sekt which was then signed by Karl and given to us as a parting gift when we left. When dinner was over, we were brought down into the 800+ year-old cellar under the winery, where we drank our way through probably twenty bottles from various vintages dating back to the 1970s. I was amazed to find how well Gruner Veltliner can age. The whole experience was indescribable. Around once an hour during this trip I would think to myself "Holy shit- this is really happening." And it was. It did.
I was made well aware of this when I woke up the following morning wishing that I was dead. I had been out until two in the morning, and when my alarm went off at seven, I almost started to cry. instead I hit the snooze on my alarm repeatedly, leaving only enough time to get up, shower, dress, and go down to breakfast, which I couldn't possibly eat. I settled for several glasses of orange juice and water, trying desperately to rehydrate before the drinking was to start again.
After breakfast we took a long, cold, damp hike to the uppermost Steininger Riesling vineyard. I was lagging behind this time not for photo opportunities but in case I had to vomit behind a vine somewhere. By the time we reached our destination, I had sweated out most of the prior night's wine, and after a roll with farmer's cheese, I actually enjoyed the vertical tasting. We stood in the vineyard and tried six different vintages of the wine while surrounded by the vines it came from. Very cool. We hiked back to the winery and tasted through the entire still wine portfolio over lunch, which was again prepared by Brigitta and the Steininger daughters.
After lunch we got back in the bus for a journey to the Wachau, where we toured the Tegernseerh0f winery with sixth generation winemaker M@rtin Mittelbach. When we got out of the bus, Martin pointed to the top of an enormous hill and said "We'll walk up there". I laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn't. We walked. This time I wasn't hung over, so it wasn't so bad. I was back to shutter bugging, and I laughed when I realized how far behind Boston was lagging, especially after I remembered the youngest guy calling me an amatuer for going to bed at two am. We had gluwein made from Gruner Veltliner grapes and these tasty little rolls that were everywhere in Austria that I can't remember the name of. They looked like Kaiser rolls, but they were crunchy on the outside and soft on the insde and way better than any Kaiser roll I have ever had. When we got to the winery, the family was in the courtyard waiting for us with glasses and wine, and Martin showed us a big chunk of dirt from the vineyard and explained that this was why his wines taste the way they do. I was distracted by one of the women (I use that term loosely- she was an immature little twat)hanging eagerly on every word Martin said, leaning close and wearing an unnaturally large grin, trying hard to get his attention. We'll call her Jeannie. All the while, Martin only had eyes for a different woman, who I will refer to as Kathy. Kathy is very cool, very unassuming, and cute as hell. Since Jeannie had been rather annoying up to this point, I was thoroughly enjoying myself watching her suffer. She and some of the other women from her area had a kind of Mean Girls vibe that I found confusing and irritating, and I had been doing my best to avoid them while at the same time wondering what I might have done to offend them since we had barely met. At dinner that night, I sat next to Kathy and discovered that she was having the same experience. Then I found out that the only other woman who was there from Vermont was also having this problem, and we all bonded. The trip got easier at that point. Dinner was in the actual home of the family, which is a building from the 1700's (Probably not that impressive to the British readership, but for me it was a new experience).
I did stay up a bit late that night drinking in the lobby, but I was much smarter about my consumption. Martin had his iPhone in an empty wineglass, blaring music while he cranked open yet another magnum of Gruner Veltliner, when I headed up to bed. I did manage to snag a booking with him to do a tasting at my store while he is in town next week.