Saltless

Though I visit Rust almost yearly (always around this time of the year), I have never been to any of Rust’s wine taverns. It is never a problem to find a winery selling bottled wine in Rust, but coming across an open Buschenschank serving food is not easy for some reason. I had my luck today, however, as I noticed the open door to Buschenschank Schandl, and a menu at the entrance that promised a “Schweinerei” (a rough translation would be “pigsty”), which could only be a Brettljause. Moreover, it was a Brettljause made out of Mangalitza pork – the top quality meat of wooly pigs common in this region.

At first, I was annoyed by the amount of blood sausage on my plate, but then I remembered that the menu had only promised the blood sausage, Bauchspeck (pork belly) and Verhackertes, and was happy to discover that some salami and ham were included, too. Moreover, the “pork belly” turned out to be Lardo, white fat from the pig’s back, which I remember fondly from my former encounters with Mangalitza.

The blood sausage had almost no taste, which was fine with me; it was just unfortunate that mixing it with horseradish did not add anything, for the horseradish was very weak as well. However, when I switched to the Lardo and the other ingredients, for a second I thought I had caught coronavirus and lost my sense of taste. Not only were they all seriously lacking salt, but they also lacked any flavor of their own. I had to put a generous amount of salt and pepper on them to make them taste of anything. On the other hand, the wine I was drinking was great – rich and smooth. I was not sick, after all.

With the Brettljause gone rather quickly (it was not an especially big one), I decided to order a piece of Wurzelspeck, which is spiced bacon, just to quell my disappointment a bit. However, once again, the only taste came from the spices, but not from the bacon itself. Peter Schandl must have found the most tasteless Mangalitza pigs in Austria to put on his menu.

Alas, my first experience with Rust’s Heurige was not a great one. Perhaps I would have been better off ordering a warm dish (Schandl has quite a few on offer), but today the best part of my dinner was clearly the wine.