Weinstraßenfahrt

   This weekend's outing: a bus drive down the Styrian wine road, about 3/4 of the way from Graz to Slovenian border.
   The first stop was a tiny wine museum in Kitzeck, built in a wine farmer's old house. A farmer and his family lived in the house until the 70's. The best piece, I thought, was a wine press a bit like our cider press but about 20x bigger. The building was perched with a church on the top of a hill and surrounded by wine fields. The giant windmill in the photo is called a Klapotek and has large wooden blocks which hit a board as the blades rotate. It's the Styrian version of a scarecrow!

   The second stop was a wine tasting at a vinyard near Gamlitz. The seven white wines and one red that were poured in the kellar represented a rough cross-section of the wines grown/pressed in Austria. After a few hours of relaxed  conversation we moved outside for raspberry schnapps and enjoying the farm. The landscape was so beautiful and the weather so warm that nearly everyone was sprawled in the sun until we had to get back on the bus.
   The last stop was a Buschenschank, a traditional tavern. Instead of the meat plate that everyone else got, I had a cheese plate- more cheese in 2 hrs than I had eaten in the past month together, piled on slices of heavy, dark brown Bauernbrot (farmer's bread).
All in all, it was a fantastic day- good food, good wine, good conversation!