In June this year Patrick and Bengt Baumgartner travel to Austria, Germany and on to a sneaky few days in Alsace and Burgundy. Bengt is sommelier at The European in Melbourne and was winner of the 2011 CellarHand/Frankland Estate Riesling Scholarship award. Bengt has already attended the Frankland Estate International Riesling Tasting in Sydney in February this year as part of his prize – and is now about to undertake the second part of the prize – two weeks with some of the greatest Riesling producers on the planet. In addition to attending VieVinum in Vienna, Austria we’ll be visiting, to name a few – Prager, Bründlmayer, FX Pichler, Dönnhoff, Wittmann, Georg Breuer, Gunderloch, Heymann-Löwenstein, Dr Loosen and A. Christmann and many more. Topped off by a visit to Bernhard Huber to look at his fabulous Pinots and an appointment with one Madame Leroy in Vosne-Romanée. For a man cannot survive on Riesling alone. Almost, but not quite!
Stay tuned for regular updates as we travel.