These Austrian wines paired very cleverly with Cantonese dishes in B-Cape Steakshouse. Producer Matthias Kron presented them along with the story of his complex network of small-plot vineyards in Südburgenland near the border with Hungary.

Matthias speaks excellent Chinese (though he presented in English), for he is a scholar of sinology. After university, tired of being poor, for 15 years he built his fortune manufacturing Soymilk in Europe. Five years ago he purchased a struggling partnership of 30 small wineries, and so now his wines come from over 80 different vineyard locations in the region, and some of the vines are very old.

The welcome white was served very cold and attacked my palate with such mouth-searing acidity (6.5gm/l) that I cried aloud, but both Naseem and Aaron across from me said they quite liked it, so what could I do? It is called Gemischter Satz, and it is a field blend of Welschriesling, Weissburgunder, Gruner Veltliner and Gelber Muskateller, all of which names are much easier to pronounce after two or three glasses.

My favorite wine of the evening was the rose. Clearly not strawberry juice, this wine also had pronounced acidity, but restrained extraction added lovely floral notes leading to cherry and lemon-peel, and, dare I say, lovely minerality. Austrians really know how to work with Zweigelt, and I wonder if this component of the rose accounts for its mouth-filling fullness. Anyway, there’s none to buy right now. We’ll have to wait for the next vintage, 2015, but if you can believe the news, all wine from Europe will be great this year. Many are beginning to realize that a good rose is by far the most versatile pairing for Taiwanese cuisine, and this one also went very well with the Cantonese-style prawns (and everything else too).

Matthias was quite adamant that he wants us to drink his red wines chilled, and I agree up to a point. “Room temperature” means room temperature in a Chateau in France in February, 15C if you’re lucky. Since our room temperature at the dinner was 24 or thereabouts, of course the wine needed to be iced down a little. But on this occasion we had to wait 20 minutes for the wine to reach optimum drinking temperature, and by that time most people had already swilled their glasses dry. Fortunately we were well supplied from bottles removed from the ice buckets, and the last one, Blaufränkisch von Riegl 2012, was decanted for 2hours before serving. Naseem came upon a mnemonic for this variety. Unforgettably, she calls it Broken Fish.

All the premium reds from Groszer Wein were big and ripe and full of character, lightly oaked, with spice and silky tannins, well worth aging. Production of all Matthias’ wines is quite limited, so get them while you can. For some it’s already too late.

Thanks again to Larry Liao, president of Elfland International Co.,Ltd.(艾芬華國際有限公司) for making this great evening happen.