Fabulous Austrian Wineries

Photographer Armin Faber and author Rudi Knoll are delighted to invite you, dear reader, to explore the fabulous wines of Austria. The winemakers we visited on our sometimes adventure-filled tour, covering thousands of kilometres through a wide range of wine regions on the hunt for important wines, showed photographer Armin (who, like his writing colleague, has been exploring Austria for the past 40 years) the delights that Austrian wine has to offer and the wonders of simply enjoying it in the most comfortable and sometimes even the most extravagant form possible. Our wish list for this volume included numerous wineries that form part of the Austrian elite, some of which have a tradition dating back centuries. However, we also looked at numerous wineries that have not been in the spotlight for anything like as long, but are rising stars thanks to their talent, enthusiasm, and willingness to toil away in the winery and vineyards. It was important to us that all should be likeable, hospitable people able to tell interesting and even exciting or funny stories. We invested time in coaxing these out and listening to them – and, of course, in tasting, testing and tasting again in order to establish the current state of affairs and later set this down in a written form rather different to the stereotypical setup of many wine books, although without scrimping on the detail.The same applies to the photography: we did not want the copyand-paste image of a winemaker standing in a vineyard holding a wine glass, which many publications seem to view as their typical behaviour. Instead, Armin Faber prompted them to try unusual activities such as sitting on a couch up in the vineyard, jumping a horse over a magnum bottle, or a 6 a.m. start to ensure a sunrise would shine a suitable light on one winemaker.