Crime Novels and Austrian Wine

When the possibility of moving to Austria appeared on the horizon, becoming likelier by the minute, I consulted the trusted owner of my local bookshop about contemporary Austrian authors. The idea of getting an impression of my future home through its fiction appealed to me. Most of what I knew about Austria I had learned through Romy Schneider’s wonderful, albeit unrealistic Sissi films. (I still can’t help crying whenever I see Romy Schneider as Sissi hurrying towards her daughter on St. Mark’s Square.) Knowing me to be a crime novel addict, my bookseller warmly recommended Alfred Komarek and his “Inspektor Polt” series to me, which proved an instant success. Back then, only three parts of the series had been published, and I devoured them all in one go. Later on, when I saw the wonderful TV adaptations with a brilliant Erwin Steinhauer perfectly cast as Inspector Simon Polt and an equally brilliant Monica Bleibtreu as the redoubtable gossip monger Aloisia Habesam, I completely fell for the series.

Not only are the Polt books a wonderful read, they also piqued my interest in Austrian viticulture. The novels are set in a Lower Austrian wine-growing area, the lives of all the protagonists revolving more or less around wine. Naturally, this provides insights into all the procedures connected with the production and consumption of this divine drink. My husband and I were wine enthusiasts before, but this had most definitely not included Austrian wine. If anything, as far as we were concerned, Austrian wine was still closely connected to the antifreeze-scandal of 1985. But not for much longer!

In October 2002, two months after moving to Austria, we made our first visit to the Wachau region, the most prominent Austrian wine-growing area (at least since Roman times) and a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. Grape harvests on the German Palatinate Wine Route had been a fixture of our lives before, but our lives had started revolving around a new centre. In a small village called Joching, we spent our first evening in a typical Lower Austrian wine cellar and tasted our first outstanding “Urgestein Riesling”, a white wine typical of the Wachau. This marked the beginning of a new love. During the next several years, we explored the whole country including the wine-growing areas in Southern Styria and Lower Austria as well as those around Lake Neusiedl. On several occasions we met impressive young vintners who had only recently taken over the family business and were trying to break new ground with absolutely amazing and highly convincing results.

A region we like particularly well is the Lower Austrian area around the small town of Retz, near the Czech border, which happens to be where Alfred Komarek and the author Peter Turrini live. Three years ago, my husband and I spent our summer holidays there, living in a small, renovated farm house we had all to ourselves, making tours on foot as well as by bike – and visiting the local vintners. None of my colleagues had ever been there and nobody understood why anyone would want to spend their holidays at such a place, at the back of beyond. It was like paradise! We were looking for a really special white wine for the upcoming wedding of our oldest daughter and our Austrian son-in-law. And we had no problem finding it in one of the tiny villages of the area.

According to many of the Austrian vintners we talked to, the antifreeze scandal (in hindsight) was a blessing in disguise rather than a catastrophe because it swept the market of black sheep and provided an opportunity for a fresh start. As far as wine is concerned, we have already – well and truly – become genuine Austrians.

Just to close the circle, I sincerely hope you don’t have me down for an unsophisticated reader. That would be a gross error of judgment! It goes without saying that my reading wasn’t confined to Alfred Komarek. I tackled other authors as diverse as Wolf Haas, Joseph Haslinger, Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard, Barbara Frischmuth, Ingeborg Bachmann, and even Elfriede Jelinek – but Komarek was my first love and as such definitely had an impact on my initial perception of Austria.