Klosterneuberg

Klosterneuburg is the site of an Augustinian monastery built in the 1100s. It was commissioned by Leopold III, a Babenberg, who later was canonized a saint. The story goes that Leopold and Agnes, his beloved wife, were riding their horses, when her veil flew off her head. Nine years later, while Leopold was hunting in the woods he found her veil and saw a vision of the Virgin Mary, who asked him to build her a church on the site in her honor.
In the early 1700s after Charles VI lost during the Spanish Succession, he felt the need to show the Habsburgs power and decided to make Klosterneuburg the Escorial of Austria. He wanted to build his own escorial because he lost the Spanish one. However he died seven years after they started construction. The construction stopped once he died 7 years later because his daughter Maria Theresia had other more important diplomatic issues to deal with than to see the building of this church go through. Its interesting to see because the church is unfinished you can see the way they were going about building the church. The new visitor’s entrance to the monastery is only partially finished. You can see that they were beginning to smooth out the sides of the walls and cover the brick with a more aesthetically pleasing covering.
Now, Klosterneuburg is the monastery for Augustinian canons, this did not happen until about 20 years after the church had been commissioned. This monastery has over 900 years of Augustinian history. The Augustinian canons are a monastic order that follow the teachings of St. Augustine. The process to become a canon is as follows: one can approach the order and will become a novice, after a year as a novice the chapter meets to determine if the novice can continue on. If the novice receives the chapter’s approval, he will take his simple vows for three years. After three years, the chapter will meet once again to determine if they would like to keep him for life. If admitted, he will take his solemn vows and becomes a member of the monastery for life. The process the chapter follows for voting on a novice is one that is seen in many organizations. The chapter members have black balls and white balls and will place white balls if they think the novice should pass. If the novice has more white balls then black balls, then he can move on to take his simple vows. The same process is implemented to go from taking simple vows to solemn vows. Currently there are 46 members in the Klosterneuburg monastery and the median age of its members is going down.
Klosterneuburg is also the site of one of Austria’s biggest and oldest wine estates, dating back nearly 900 years and consisting of 275 acres. The cellars are Baroque cellars dating back 270 years. The grapes are from all different areas in Austria. Each grape has a different soil and microclimate that is most conducive to its growth and taste. These grapes are then brought to Klosterneuburg where they are stomped, fermented, bottled, and shipped out for sale. The close location of the Danube made it easy in the past to ship the wines to various Bavarian monasteries. The cellars are very cool and conducive to the fermentation process. In order to tell if the conditions are good, they can check the types of mold growing inside the cellar. Black mold means that the conditions are good; however, once white mold starts to grow than the conditions inside the cellar are too humid. Every year they ship out about 600,000 bottles of wine.
After visiting the monastery of Klosterneuburg, we went to Heuriger or a wine tavern, where they serve young wines. Here you can order wines and some small tapas like dishes. It was a lot of fun to get to know everyone on the trip better over a nice glass of wine in a beautiful garden setting. I preferred the white wine to the red wine and I tried some of the traditional Austrian dishes, which were very delicious.