I can't believe I went off on a tangent. That never happens. Anyway, the whole "groovy" thing stems from a recent dunking o' the whiskers into several different bottles of Grüner Veltliner...an intimidating-sounding wine grape that is often referred to by the much "cuter" name of GrüVee (pronounced "groovy"), thus softening the awkward Germanic name (and lessening thoughts of robots dancing to techno music. Am I right?).

As I was (eventually) saying, Grüner Veltliner is basically THE white wine grape of Austria. The wine-growing regions of Austria are in the eastern part of the country, in and around Vienna. GrüVee makes food-friendly wines with flavors and aromas of minerals, pepper, herbs, peaches, and citrus. It's not Riesling. It's not Sauvignon Blanc. It's a pretty unique grape that makes awefully unique wines. But, yes, the name can be confusing. In fact, the German word for wine is "wein" and the word for Vienna is "Wien", thus easy fodder for mix ups. That being said, the German word for Viennese is "wiener", so a Viennese wine label written in German is a slow-pitch softball when it comes to sophomoric humor (see video below for details).

Getting back to the evening at hand, four said bottles of "GrüVee" (the umlaut is still a little intimidating) were graciously donated by Austrian Wine and the other three by Matt from Wine and I (thanks, chaps!). Not quite having the intestinal fortitude to down seven bottles myself, I called on the eager palates and steadfast livers of local Atlanta bloggers Ed from Wine Tonite!, Jimmy from Eat It Atlanta, and Broderick from Savory Exposure. We ranked four of the bottles (as part of a national blog-wide event called the "GrüVee" olympics...results HERE) and simply enjoyed the three from Wolfgang. As always, it was a great time, better represented in moving pictures than words on a webpage.

To protect the innocent, I've omitted the following transgressions from the video below, which is a brief recount of another fun and wine-soaked evening at Chez Wine Tonite: