Category: Wine and Food Pairings

The City of Vienna is the World’s Largest Urban Vineyard

Vienna, the capital of Austria is the world’s largest wine-producing city.

Here are some facts. Vienna has 700 hectares of vineyards, with over 276 producers.  The vintners produce within the city limits, in the areas around Kahlenberg, Nussberg, Bisamberg, and Mauer, where the Danube and proximity of the Vienna Woods provides optimal climatic conditions.

Wine Heritage

Wine production is a long-established tradition in Vienna which dates back to the 12th century. Austria’s signature grape is the Grüner Veltliner, a white wine variety that ripens in mid to late October, and accounts for over a quarter of the wine produced in Vienna.

Wine Culture

Some of the best places to taste and explore Viennese wines is in ‘heurigers’ or taverns. Heuriger mean, in EN, a cosy tavern where local winemakers showcase and serve their wines.  This is still a big part of Viennese city life. Vienna has over 100 heurigers scattered around the city centre. Since 2019, Viennese heuriger culture has been considered an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.

Presently Vienna’s bars and restaurants are a big part of this lively wine scene as Vienna’s creative new generation winemakers bring a contemporary twist to its ‘heuriger’ heritage. New bars rub shoulders with the ancient craft and pair the wine with locally produced food.

Vienna’s wine renaissance and the revival of this farm-to-table lifestyle make it “ A must visit destination!”

Vienna’s Wine Hiking Day 

Vienna Wine Hiking Day is held each year in the fall when locals and visitors explore the urban vineyards by four different wine trails or hiking routes. At many points along the way, the Viennese vintners offer tastings from cellar and kitchen.

Tickets can be booked online for 2022

#Vienna #winetourism #winelovers #IgersVienna #travel #travelling #history #austria #travelgram #visitvienna #travelphoto #travellife #urbanvineyard #wineculture #winetravels #urbanlife #austrianwine #wine #redwine #whitewine #viennesewines #winemaking #heuriger #wineheritage

Virgin Atlantic Airline Launches “Social Drinking Booth”

Virgin Atlantic has launched a social drinking space ‘The Booth’ on its latest A350 aircraft.

“The Booth’ will be “a cosy corner, providing comfy lounge style seating”. It will also feature two 27” touch screen monitors, and two Bluetooth audio jacks.

“We’re famous for our on-board social spaces and the introduction of The Booth elevates the customer proposition for our leisure travellers to new heights,” said Corneel Koster, Virgin Atlantic’s chief customer and operations officer.

“I’m delighted that we’ve curated The Booth specifically for our customers jetting off on holiday to our sunny destinations, such as Orlando, offering a truly stylish start to their trips,” Koster has added.

According to Virgin Atlantic, ‘The Booth’ has been “designed with beautiful, tactile finishes, including Scottish leather seats and a pressed wool effect table. It’s a luxurious spot just for two, to enjoy anything from a wine tasting experience, to a romantic dinner, a nightcap, or just a change of scene.”

People travelling between Heathrow and Orlando will be the first to experience ‘The Booth’ as a social drinking space with the first flight currently scheduled for December 2021.

#travelling #airlines #thebooth #socialdrinkingbooth #wine #winelovers #winetasting #wineandfoodpairing #spirits #spiritslover #planes #instatravelling #instaplane #travel #travelgram #cocktails #virginatlantic #avgeek

The Wine Scholar Guild launches a new sensory wine project

The Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) has unveiled a new way to assess wine that takes a deep dive into “personality,” and “terroir signature” of wine using sensory language and neuroscience.

The WSG initiative, entitled The Architecture of Taste Research Project (ATRP), involves non-traditional methods of assessment including universal criteria such as sensory perception, perceived energy and emotions to evaluate wine.

The Project Leader Julien Camus and his team took into account how language formats individual thought and collective culture and noted how olfactory notes may speak more about the genetic background, the experience and the culture of a person applying them than about a specific molecule within the wine itself.

“We need to pay more attention to the global intuitive signals our bodies give us. If we put our sole focus on wine’s structural components, we may miss the bigger message,” said WSG president, founder, and leader of the Architecture of Taste research project Julien Camus.

“Our current research is very encouraging. When using our assessment grid, certain sets of descriptors correspond to certain terroirs. There are patterns that are statistically significant,” added Camus.

The oenological research’s next phase of the study will involve sensory analysis experiments, blind-panel tastings, statistical analyses, and an expanded set of assessment criteria to encompass salinity, bitterness, umami and minerality – each within the context of how the body responds to stimuli.

The WSG has put together a multi-disciplinary, advisory committee of professionals to oversee the ATRP. Members of the committee include: Gabriel Lepousez, neuroscientist; Benoît Marsan, wine chemist; Marc-André Selosse, botanist and mycologist; Thibault Boulay, historian and vigneron; Clémence Corbière, historian and sommelière; Pascaline Lepeltier MOF, restaurateur and wine writer; Andrew Jefford, journalist and author; and Lisa M. Airey, CWE, wine educator.

The first large-scale panel tasting using the WSG’s new ATRP tasting grid will take place in Alsace sometime this month (September 2021).

 

#wine #winenews #instawine #winetasting #winescholarguild #wineeducation #WSG #ArchitectureofTaste #terroir #winedescriptions #olfactory #blindtasting #winelovers

Wine Grounds Launches Machine Learning-Based Vintage Scores

Wine Grounds announced this week a revolutionary new vintage quality feature to their food and wine pairing app, Grape Base. Their data-driven approach to determining the quality of a vintage allows industry professionals and consumers to see scores for any wine-growing region in the world. By utilizing machine learning and a proprietary weather model, Grape Base can instantly predict the overall quality of a vintage based on the weather during the growing season, at harvest and throughout the winter.

Grape Base is taking a hyper-local approach to vintage quality and creating scores for the top varietals grown in every officially recognized region, district and or appellation across the globe. Vintage scores will be continually expanded on and made available after the end of harvest in the northern and southern hemispheres. Industry professionals can use the data to make purchasing decisions and project trends in consumer buying habits.

Wine Grounds Founder Chris Hall states, “By tracking and evaluating the weather of a specific region and comparing that to the ideal conditions for the grapes grown there, we can predict the quality of the vintage for those grapes. You can then use those scores to pick the best vintage in a wine shop, from your own rack or out to eat. Somms can ahead on building wine programs that showcase varietals at their very best. It is absolute revolution in wine tech.”

Highlights Include:

  • Weather model can be applied to any region in the world for any grape and it is continuously learning and improving
  • 75+ regions available with scores for the past ten years
  • Search allows users to find scores by region or grape varietal
  • Monthly subscriptions start at US $1.99 after a one-month free trial
  • Grape Base is available in the Apple Store and on Google Play

#wine #winewednesday #wednesday #winetrends #businessofwine #tech #winegrounds #machinelearning #vintagewines #vintagescores #foodandwineapp #somms #wineandfoodpairing #app #AI #winelovers #instawine #wineinstagram #winelife #winemarketing #socialmediamarketing

Covent Garden launches a three-week Rosé Festival

Rosé season is here and to celebrate all things pink, Covent Garden [London] is hosting its first-ever three-week rosé festival which runs from May 17th to 6th June 6th.

Over 20 restaurants participating with over 30 varieties of rosé wine, rosé cocktails, rosé themed menus, as well as 9 pop-ups from Mirabeau, Amie Wine, HUN Wine, Dirty Martini, Chez Antoinette x AIX-en-Provence, Magners, The Bubble Bros, Fiona Fleur and The Oystermen x Pol Roger which will be taking over Covent Garden’s Piazza.

With the return of indoor dining, restaurants across Covent Garden will also reopen over 2,500 additional dining spots. The area will remain at the heart of outdoor dining with the botanical pocket garden seating area on the East Piazza remaining open for takeaway drinking and dining.

 

For visitors wanting to join in the blush celebrations but preferring non-alcoholic options Ladurée will host a rosé-inspired afternoon tea, Shake Shack will offer a limited-edition cherry blossom pink shake, Amorino will be serving their very instagramable rose-shaped ice-creams in a multitude of flavours and Bubble Wrap will sell an exclusive Covent Garden Rosé and Strawberry Blossom combo. For tea connoisseurs, Whittard and Mariage Freres will also be offering over 40 rose blend teas.

I would say it’s time for a glass of rosé and some retail therapy!

For more information and details about the Rosé Festival, indoor and outdoor dining and shopping log into coventgarden.london

#rosewine #cocktails #wineevent #instawine #rosewinelovers #winelovers #wine #CoventGarden #RoseAllDay #AlfrescoLondon #RoseFestival #ThisisLondon #rosè