Having read the title of this story, “Austria Stories Untold: Snowbound in September” you’re probably thinking this is a tale of hardship and woe in the mountains, or perhaps even a ghost story like Stephen King‘s The Shining – about a snowbound resort hotel haunted by malevolent spirits – but it’s not.
This is a tale with a much brighter ending. A story of happiness, and exhilaration. The blissful serenity of hiking through a mountain wood as the first snow of the season paints the green of summer over with a frosty palate of winter whites. Of towering, powder coated pines billowing in the wind, toing and froing, as Old Man Winter makes his first appearance in one of the world’s most beautiful alpine nations.
Yes friends, the tale I’m about to tell is of joyful elation, of taking shelter for the night in a rustic, 260-year old Tyrollean mountain inn during a terrible storm. The magic of sitting by a crackling fire, and knowing there is a massive cellar just below your feet that is home to 6000 bottles of vintage wine owned and curated by Austria’s No.1 sommelier, Annemarie Foidl, who just happens to be in a sharing mood!
Our story begins as a group of intrepid hikers (6 Americans, 1 wickedly funny Irish lady, and the Cosmo Kramer-like Canadian recounting this tale) trudge their way up one of Austria’s most famous peaks, the majestic Kitzbüheler Horn near St. Johann in Tirol, during a freak, early September snowstorm.
One of the hearty mountaineers is Hilary Nangle, one of America’s most beloved travel writers, who is better known by her readers as “Maine Travel Maven.” Being a Canadian from the province of Quebec myself, Hilary and I have always gravitated towards each other on trips through the Alps with others, as Maine is almost a Canadian province, or at least in my mind it is…but let’s get back to our story.
As we stop to catch our breath, our trek leader Sigrid Pichler, an Austrian by birth, and proud New Yorker by choice, confesses to Hilary, and yours truly, that she’s never seen this much snow come down so fast in her entire life…especially in September!
“I’m pretty sure we won’t be snowed in tomorrow, but then again I’m not, ‘cause it’s starting to look like it’ll be waist deep by morning. But if it’s not waist deep, and trees haven’t ripped down the gondola cables, we should be able to ride back down from midstation,” she adds with a laugh.
With this new information from our fearless leader, Hilary begins to giggle, and inserts one of Maine’s most famous writers into the zeitgeist of the day, as thoughts of not getting back to civilization the next morning start looking like a distinct possibility.
“Hey what if the snow doesn’t stop for days and we’re stuck up there at the hotel, and it turns into a Stephen King movie like the Shining, but the only things haunting us are the 6000 bottles of wine in the basement?” Nangle says with a giggle, before gleefully breaking out into the “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” song substituting beer for the 6000 bottles of wine in the cellar of Angerer Alm, the 18th century mountain inn we’ll be calling home for the night – if we ever get there! But again, we digress, so back to the story we go.
As the sun begins to set, and the wind begins to howl, our 45-minute hike is barely half over as the snow continues to climb higher and higher up our legs as we plod our way up the mountain. Once we arrive, our group is in for an unforgettable sleepover at Angerer Alm, which at 4000 feet up the side of the Kitzbühler Horn, is one of Austria’s highest, and most luxurious mountain alms that caters to serious wine enthusiasts. And if you’re not familiar with the concept of an Austrian alm, it’s basically an alpine hut or rifugio, as they are called in the neighboring Italian Alps – where people can dine, and even sleep over.
“The oldest parts of the alm were built 260 years ago,” Annemarie tells me when I ask her about the history of the building.
“Angerer Alm was originally the highest ‘Bauernhof’ – or farm in St. Johann in Tirol – but it was too difficult to live here all year round, so it became an ‘Alm’ or ‘alpage’ meaning it was just for summer use. Then in the early 1900s when tourism, and more importantly ski tourism, started to take off, it was updated, winterized, and became the type of alpine inn it is today. My family purchased it in 1985 with the understanding that I would eventually run the restaurant – and that’s exactly what I did in 1989, and at 21 years old, I became Austria’s youngest restaurateur and hotelier,” she adds. But enough about the history of this beautiful alpine inn, let’s get back to our story…
The group’s afternoon adventure at Angerer Alm begins with an Austrian cuisine cooking class (we would be making our own dinner!) at the inn’s very modern, high-tech kitchen, led by Annemarie’s daughter Katharina Weiss. A master chef, mother of three, and wine connoisseur like her mother Annemarie, Weiss is next in line to manage Angerer Alm when her mother decides to pull back, slow down, and start working her way through her staggering wine collection.
After an astonishingly successful Austrian cooking school sesh in the kitchen, our group, led by Frau Weiss, manages to whip together a fabulously rich Krautsalat (cabbage salad), Kaspressknödel (cheese press dumplings), and Topfenknödel (sweet dumplings using “Topfen” which is similar to Ricotta, that are covered in breadcrumbs, sugar and cinnamon, and served with a warm pear compote). Just as the cooking class ends, right on cue, Annemarie waltzes into the kitchen and pops the cork on an absolutely fabulous Malat Winery Furth Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé from Austria’s sunny Krems Valley…pure perfection, and a wonderful portent of things to come!
As dinnertime approaches, the group gathers by the fireplace in Angerer Alm’s gorgeous “Gaststube” – the lounge and dining section of the inn for guests. After sampling more amazing vino, Annemarie enters the room in an elegant Austrian dirndl with a huge smile, and lures the group to a door leading to a long flight of stairs into the alm’s netherworld.
“Now we go to Angerer Alm’s ‘Wellness Center’ come with me,” she says with a diabolical laugh as she floats down the stairs into her spectacular subterranean wine cellar – which looks more like a dimly lit cave inhabited by bats and teutonic vampires (I’m thinking Nosferatu here) than a home for dusty vintage vino bottles.
As I poke around the cellar’s darkest corners, looking for coffins and other clues that German speaking bloodsuckers may be lurking behind rows and rows of shelves housing some of the most amazing bottles of wine in the world, I hear Hilary asking Annemarie a question.
“How many bottles do you have down here exactly?” Hilary asks.
“About 6000 bottles,” Annemarie responds, as I silently mouth the word “YASSSSSSSS!” to myself while doing a little celebration jig in the shadows!
Moments later, as I halt my euphoric wine dance, we enter the heart of the wine cellar, a candlelit room with ancient stone walls and floors, where the most precious gems and pearls of Angerer Alm’s treasure trove of vintage wines and other spirits are laying down in peaceful slumber. Then, all of a sudden, the silence is broken by the joyful ding of another cork popping.
“Is this more Austrian Wellness Water?” I ask Annemarie as she pours sparkling wine into large Riedel glass goblets instead of thin flutes, explaining to the group that this is the best way to enjoy a glass of bubbly, especially an exquisite bottle of Buchegger Extra Brut 2017 Grosse Reserve, which tastes even better when it breathes in a big glass.
“At the moment I’m ambassador for Sekt Austria, and this bottle is from one of our best producers, Buchegger, and this is an Extra Brut Grosse Reserve which means a minimum of 36 months on vine, and Austria is more and more becoming a beautiful country for sparkling wine, with many, many new producers who make excellent quality products,” Annemarie tells the group, before fielding a host of questions about Austria’s flourishing wine industry.
Before long, someone notices a very, very, very, very, very, very, very old bottle of Madeira with a big white “1795” emblazoned on the front of the bottle.
“That’s the oldest bottle in the house. There are 30 left in the world and I bought one after three years of chasing after it. Wine can tell a story, but it can also tell you about history, and that’s why I purchased this bottle, because it’s an important piece of history,” Annemarie explains.
And what does a bottle of Madeira dating back to 1795 cost?
“A few, a few, few coins,” Annemarie coyly admits with a grin.
Armed with a wealth of knowledge about Austrian cooking, and valuable insight into the country’s booming wine business from Annemarie (who just happens to be the president of the Sommelier Union of Austria), the group makes its way to dinner and crushes three of four more bottles of wine (which include a delicious Sepp Moser 2017 Zweigelt Reserve and a devilishly delightful Kracher 2015 Spätlese Cuvée dessert wine) while devouring a self-made feast of hausgemacht sweet and savory dumplings as its dumping snow outside Angerer Alm.
As the candles lighting the dinner table melt down, the tired hiker/chef/sommeliers-in-training wander off to their cozy bedrooms as the night winds to an end. Finally alone with Annemarie, I tell her I thought I saw a visitor from the spirit world earlier upstairs, in the form of a ghostly apparition at the end of the hall outside my room. But alas, I confess, it turned out to be one of my fellow hikers, who had donned a flowing white bathrobe to use the shower.
But, still curious, and a lover of spooky stories, which become especially fun to fixate on when you’re stuck in a snowstorm in an ancient Austrian alm high up in the Tyrolean Alps, I ask Annemarie one last question, “Is Angerer Alm haunted, are there any disembodied geists inhabiting this ancient Austrian mountain lodge?”
“Only one that I can think of,” she whispers with a twinkle in her eye and mischief in her voice, “And I believe he is a Canadian!”
