Stephanie and Eduard-- I met them only a year ago, after developing a fascination for their wines. And now, I get to host them in the very place I have tasted with so many of you. We will be welcoming them to our city, offering them a roof and a big table to share. I am so happy and so excited.
And honored. Perhaps you do not know their wines:
Gut Oggau. A small, farm-based winery on the shore of the Neusiedler See in Eastern Austria. Their story is remarkable: they make wine in a 400 year old winery that they restored from abandonment, and make wines from the biodynamic vineyards that they farm themselves. Their wines are adventurous and deeply personal. Unconventional and unpredictable— but most of all, so personal that they have cast their production as a family, and give the wines the names— and portraits— of individual family members. One senses the deep love— the absolute absence of anything programmatic— that Stephanie and Eduard have for their wines and their work.
They are also stars— brilliantly charming, gravitational, magnetic. Their wines are never far from fascinating even when cast out into the world on their own; it is a very exciting and kind of witchy experience actually to taste with them. It will be amazing and wonderful to share a room together.
We will offer a deep and intimate tasting of both of our wines. The tasting will be somewhat more leisurely and less academic than my usual sessions. But there will still be many wines: each of us will present four wines of our own that we prize (I am going to pour library Glos and Sylphs and two more recent wines).
And we will start and finish with two sparkling wines (of course), made by two colleagues a world apart, in Oregon and Champagne. There will be so much dialogue; a conversational web of winemaking. It will be a very special evening.
Please arrive promptly at 5. We will meet you on the sidewalk and usher you upstairs where sparkling wine will await you. We are limiting this to 25 guests, and each of you may purchase 4 tickets.
