The Pannobile Weekend*

the Pannobile 9 (photo courtesy of Pannobile OEG)

This weekend we visited these fine gal and guys in Austria, at the very far east corner, on the shores of Lake Neusiedl. They call themselves “Pannobile“, which is a group of nine winemakers from the village of Gols in Burgenland, whose goal is to create the individual, the unique wine as opposed to the globalization hereof. The name derives from Pannonia, the historical region covering parts of east Austria, Hungary and ex-Yugoslavia. Every year, each Pannobile winery produces one white and one red wine, from autochtonous grapes, and only after each member gives his OK to certain criteria being fulfilled, may the wine bear the Pannobile label. These wines are all presented to the public on the first weekend of September and last weekend it was the turn of the 2004 vintage to come forward.

the Pannobile red box 2004

Yes, we did taste all of them, and then some more. On this weekend, you have the opportunity to visit the cellars of the Pannobile wineries and taste not only the Pannobile wines but the whole line of wines each of them produces. If you have ordered any a year ago and were lucky enough to be allocated some, you may pick your wines up as well. Usually the Pannobile wines are already sold out before they have been bottled.

We visited 6 of the cellars and had a great time. Please click on the pictures below to see which ones they are and read more.

the Pannobile cellars we visited, not pictured are Paul Achs and Gsellman & Hans

We were also lucky enough to get a private tour of the Preisinger vineyards on Sunday. We were awed at how beautiful they were, how distributed over the Wagram area (two rows here, three rows there) and most importantly, how much work it is to maintain a vineyard. Here are some pictures. Again, if you click on them you’ll see bigger pictures and can read some more.

the Preisinger vineyards

We topped it all of with our favorite and traditional Sunday lunch when we are in the area. We went to “Dankbarkeit“, a restaurant dedicated to the region, its products and its cuisine, serving dishes long forgotten, accompanied with great wines from the region, be it from their own vineyard or from other, renowned, cellars. “Dankbarkeit” is a prize-winning restaurant where we always feel ourselves at home. Here you can eat star-level food without the frou-frou and without the need to wear a tie & a jacket. The staff hasn’t changed in years, the owner himself is among the servers and at the next table the village-elder are playing cards.

Sunday meal at the “Dankbarkeit”

This was a great weekend as always. We have been doing this twice a year (in Gols there is also a more general Wine Spring Fest in April) for 6 years now and I see no reason to stop it.

Dankbarkeit Gasthaus und Weinbau

Hauptstr. 39
A-7141 Podersdorf
+ 43 2177 2223

* Sorry about all the confusion and broken or wrong picture links and layout problems on wednesday afternoon. I had to learn some html the hard way, but now I have it! because of a technical problem with WordPress.com, some thumbnails are not shown, instead you see only the name of the picture. Please click on these as well, as they do open up to show the proper picture. I am working on the solution to the problem, in the meanwhile, accept my apologies. Now I just seem to have a layout problem (picture – caption distance too big) but I hope to get that out of the way as well. Everything seems to be ok now. If you experience any problems with the pictures and/or the layout, please leave a comment.