Wein am Berg Sölden Review: Austria's Ultimate Alpine Wine Festival
Discover why Wein am Berg is one of Europe's most unique wine festivals, combining world-class wine tastings, Michelin-starred dining and unforgettable experiences high in the Austrian Alps at Sölden.
Wein am Berg. Even my rudimentary Deutsch is passable enough to recognise that the offer of ‘wine on the mountain’ is too good to resist. An incredible curation of the best alpine wines? A gathering of over 20 award-laden chefs? The purest of powder and air so crisp, so sweet and invigorating it makes you wonder why you'd ever even imagine returning to the slate-grey streets of the city?
Count me in and hoist me up the glacier.
The very best of Alpine wines, served on a glacier. What’s not to love?
Nestled in the almost-too-picturesque alpine valley of Sölden, a stone’s throw from Innsbruck in the perma-pretty Austrian countryside, the Wein am Berg festival - celebrating its latest glittering year upon my arrival - is much more than yet another Austrian wine festival, which come two a penny in a country rightly proud of its viticultural heritage and fiercely guarded output. Hosted at the end of each skiing season by the five-star Hotel Das Central (arguably the most photogenic of the larger Austrian alpine ski lodge hotels), Wein am Berg has become a high point on which to end the year; a veritable end-of-term celebration of all the best things life has to offer.
Celebrating Regional Excellence at Wein am Berg Festival
It's a fiesta focused on a part of Europe we know and love well; a snaking set of valleys and mountains with elevations reaching a dizzying 3500 metres above sea level, where the cragged peaks and vast glaciers do away with such terrestrial matters like national borders. While Hotel Das Central is undoubtedly in Austria, this is really Alpine country - a place where sensory pleasures abound for those who come to seek them, and where national borders become hazy and snowblind. After all, from the higher points of the Rettenbach glacier, you can see Italy, Germany, Switzerland and more of Austria to the east, and despite a chequered history, it’s a region in which relative cross-cultural conviviality is the order of the day. After all, the mountains pre-date every historical conflict; they're still dragging mammoths and neolithic men out of the permafrost up here.
Wine tasting on the Rettenbach Glacier
For Wein Am Berg, ski fanatics and wine lovers alike flock from neighbouring countries and regions (and from further afield) to Sölden for the festival to indulge the senses in the snowbound wilderness, before hitting the slopes for possibly the last time for a good few seasons. It's not hard to see the allure. Even halfway through Spring, the conditions for hillside skiing and cross country ventures are pristine, and there's a real sense of jubilation both on and off the piste. As such, this really is a festival many see as a highlight of the calendar, and one worth traversing the mountain ranges to attend.
And so, following a brief hop from Heathrow to Innsbruck (and I’ve often said the descent into this particular Austrian airport, which sees the plane descend through the valley and skim over gingerbread houses and church spires before touching down, is one of my favourite flights), we’re ready to begin.
From the opening night’s salvo of popping corks, the impressive breadth of Wein am Berg becomes blindingly obvious. There are dozens upon dozens of exhibitors in attendance - crisp Riesling wines from the Mosel Valley, inky Austrian Zweigelt, grassily herbaceous Grüner Veltliner from the Hungarian borders (a particular favourite of mine), aged Alsatian whites the colour of autumn leaves, Tyrolean reds… the wine selection is an aficionado of Mitteleuropean vino’s personal Elysium. I was, as those aware of my restless championing of this part of the world’s oenological output might imagine, a very happy man indeed.
A Glacial Gastronomic Experience
Benjamin Norris eats the Alps, Wein am Berg
Austrian hospitality, especially here on the retreating edge of one of Europe’s great glacial landscapes, is predicated on an impulse to feed, and to feed well. Night one of Wein Am Berg didn't just present an expo of literally countless fine wines, poured happily by the glass by vintners more than happy to showcase their wares, but also a celebration of regional dishes designed to sate the palate further.
It was an impressive set up. Glass in hand, guests wandered into the hotel dining area to be met with a school dinner-style line of Michelin-starred chefs, each keen to pile your plate up with beautifully-constructed culinary delights. This being Austria, there was no shortage of dishes shining the spotlight on potatoes, truffle, ferments, dairy products and pickles. There were whipped butters, creamy emulsions, wildflowers and freshwater fish roes. There were game meats aplenty, humble schnitzels re-engineered into contemporary culinary marvels and towering visions crafted from chocolate. Oh, how we ate.
“Just as I and my fellow guests began telling their new best friends on the communal tables how they couldn't possibly eat another thing, the largest cheese trolley I've ever seen trundled into view. Everybody cheered.”
Competitive Michelin-starred dining
Day two saw Wein am Berg take great lengths to live up to its name. Before the sun had reached its zenith, guests were zipping up the mountainside on what I was told was Europe's fastest ski lift. Atop the glacier, a select few of the white wine producers from the night before had set up their tasting tables, and we set about enjoying an array of celebrated vintages at a considerable altitude. I was told by superstar Austrian vintner Willi Bründlmayer, whose enthusiasm for the art of winemaking matches the quality of his creations, that his Riesling wines were envisioned to be enjoyed amid exactly this kind of backdrop. Much has been written about how both altitude and fresh mountain air impacts the finer features of white wines on the crisper and more mineral side, and it's hard to imagine a better place to encounter such expression of terroir on the glass. I've spent many years as a wine writer, attending no shortage of oenological festivities. I must admit, sipping an outstanding Grüner Veltliner with the sun-drenched monochrome bombast of the Austrian Alps in front of me was my favourite thus far.
The evening's activities presented more wines to try, more dishes to explore. This time, the gastronomic aspect of the festival was laid out with a thrillingly competitive element, with each invited chef and their team setting up stations to serve a unique set menu to tempt the guests. There was, perhaps inevitably, some cringeworthy oompah music to bring us all somewhat back down to Earth. I'm not going to lie - the events of the night are a little hazy. I am, however, reliably informed by my accompanying journalists that I was having the time of my life, and that my dancing was a clear highlight for all involved.
Bründlmayer Riesling, as envisioned by its creator
A Plethora of Things to do in Sölden
Day three promised a slightly unusual set of treats, and I for one was keen to take a break from the bottles, if only for the daylight hours. Sölden, perhaps unsurprisingly as a result of its remarkable and epic natural beauty, has often graced the silver screen. Its most recent foray into the realm of cinema has been as a key location in Spectre, Daniel Craig’s penultimate outing as the UK film industry's most bankable secret agent. With the diehard dedication of the 007 franchise’s fans clearly in mind, a James Bond museum was launched in 2022 to celebrate the valley’s connection with the film, adding yet another reason why those with interests other than just skiing might consider spending a holiday on the glacier.
The James Bond Experience at Ice Q. Genuinely worth visiting.
Frankly, I expected the museum to be crap; a tie-in to a movie franchise based on a single scene, as every British castle and cathedral now does on the back of their connection with films about a certain teenage wizard. However, the exhibition has been cannily built in a brutalist concrete bunker at the highest peak in the valley - it's an eagle's nest of a villain's lair, and one with jaw-dropping views worthy of the trip in itself. Step into the exhibit, and you're greeted with an undeniably stylish array of setpieces even those who've never seen a single Bond movie would enjoy. There's an immersive exploration of the visual impact of Bond movie opening credits - all stylised nude models, criss-crossing bullets and undulating flames - and a genuinely fascinating room in which the camera trickery behind the iconic glacier chase scenes are revealed. Scaramanga’s golden gun is there. It was, on the whole, an unexpectedly brilliant addition to the trip.
The visit to the museum was followed by a trip to a restaurant that's been on my wishlist since it opened back in 2018 - Ice Q. Restaurant critics are quick to warn their readers against visiting eateries with a view, making the perfectly logical point that most are tourist traps or relying on their panoramic vantage point as a distraction from their mediocre food. Ice Q isn't just an exception to the rule - it's an honest-to-goodness architectural marvel; a futurist glass box cantilevered on top of a mountain range at 3,000 metres above sea level. Even if the most elevated restaurant in Europe served mediocre food (which it doesn't, incidentally - it's a fabulous exploration of various regional big hitters), the sheer drama and sense of dizzying awe it presents to diners would still absolutely make it worthy of a place on your bucket list.
Ice Q Restaurant at 3.5km above sea level. Dizzyingly brilliant.
The sun sets to the sound of glasses being filled and clinked against one another, and the alpine sky turns to the colour of an Yves Klein painting against the blinding whiteness of the snow. Wein am Berg is reaching its glorious conclusion and it's time to descend from the mountain - there are whisperings that, back at the hotel, the cheese trolley has been joined by one equally comically overladen with chocolate.
Buzzing off the minerality and clarity of some of the best wines I’ve ever sipped, my plate groaning with food of extraordinary providence, I’m hit by a singular thought that’s barely left me since: here in the Austrian Alps, they certainly know how to live.
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