Wachau

But I would say my favorite would be the Danube, the upper Danube, between, which go between Wisłosan and Budapest.

What I love about that is you're getting a combination of the big capital cities, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, and then you're getting the little tiny little towns through the Wachau Valley and the little villages.

So you're just getting such a variety.

You've got four to five countries there, a variety of, of big cities, little cities.

Dry Vouvray is definitely my number one with sage brown butter.

However, Gruner Veltliner, hey, we just talked about the greats from Wachau.

Maybe a Smaragd if you listen to that show, or another medium-bodied Gruner.

Those white peppery, herbal, sometimes tropical and apple notes, you need a medium to full bodied Gruner.

explain you, right?

You may have to explain the domain, the Viner Wachau, which actually, if you look in your book, and if you go to the end of the...

Yeah, we have a short explanation at the end of your sheets.

End of the sheets, you

say Viner Wachau?

Yes.

Okay.

and has a medium body, middle body, and is a very, very nice starter.

Those wine-growing regions are situated next to each other and named respectively for the valley, or Tal, of the river Krems and river Kamp, which flow into the Danube some 80-odd kilometres west-northwest of Vienna.

Those Kremstal and Kamtal trailblazers established the ÖTV eight years after their neighbours in the Wachau founded the Vinaya Wachau District as Nobilis, their own association of wine growers to safeguard and promote quality, origin and purity.

To this day, Vinaya Wachau coexists alongside the ÖTV and the Wachau has retained, deservedly or not, a reputational edge over its fellow regions.

Rather than concern themselves with what was going on 15 minutes up river, the ETV's founders threw themselves into the task of creating their own classification system.

There were plenty of existing models to learn from, not least Bordeaux's 1855 classification and the French system of Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée or AOC, the first of which came into effect in 1936.

A vineyard might be represented by a single wine, or, in the case of Kamptal's famous Heiligenstein, as many as 19.

With relatively few exceptions, the whites were from the 2024 and 2025 harvests, the reds from 2023.

As a bonus for visitors, single vineyard wines from non ÖTV regions were available to taste, with the Wachau playing a two-session cameo and wines from Burgenland and Steiermark accessible for three sessions.

It also, it's marketing speak, but it's also true.

Cycling the Wachau outside of Vienna is gorgeous, and even when I lived there I loved doing that, so you ...

It was legit.

You weren't, you weren't swindled.

Now we do have within the Terminal Taxi Palace, there is a special private Christmas market that we allow or not allow, but we give you guys access to.

The Wachau Valley, which if you guys have ever been, it's very, very cute little, it's usually a nice bike ride between Dernstein and Melk, but it's a wine kind of country out there.

So that's also a lovely area.

Again, for this itinerary, some of our best rate experiences would be in Vienna at Strongburn Palace, which I had the pleasure of experiencing their Christmas market, which was absolutely massive.

Slovakia's mandate begins after the conclusion of the 70th session of the General Conference on 18 September and will run until the 72nd session which is scheduled for September of 2028.

House Chair Richard Rashi met the President of the National Council of Austria and the Speaker of the Czech Chamber of Deputies in the Austrian region of Wachau during a meeting held under the Austerlitz format.

The event follows up on a meeting in Bratislava in December and will also be the first meeting at the highest political level during Austria's presidency of the S3.

The main purpose of the trip is to strengthen practical inter-parliamentary cooperation between Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria.

So, I hope you enjoy this re-release, and I'll be back next week with a new show.

Roman Horvath is the winery director of Domain Wachau.

Domain Wachau is among the leading wine producers in Austria, and it is a cooperative, but it has been cited as one of the best in the world, and Domain Wachau has a full range of wines from this unbelievable area that is on the Danube, reflects the unique terroir, small vineyard plots on very steep terraces along the Danube.

There's some great diverse regional wines.

The vineyards are all cultivated by vintner families who work to capture the essence of this historic area.

Its vineyards are world-famous and have been for a very long time.

Kellerberg, Achleiten, Singriedel.

Roman Horvath is a master of wine, and he has been with Domain Wachau, helping to transform this wonderful winery cooperative into what it is today.

So what I'm seeing here is-

Though some now have, like, a s- they all have sky decks, right? That you can go up on a sky deck, and you can lay out on a lounger, and you can see the views going down the Danube, go through the Wachau Valley, and see all the hillside vineyards and stuff like, and all that.

Um, so the scenery's really nice.

But what I've noticed a few of the newer ships are doing is they're building, like, a pool up on that sky deck.