Seasonal drinking in Vienna has the KO Factor

It was on the wrong side of the 7.40am take-off and the Austrian Airways plane was still grounded on the tarmac of Zurich Airport. Snow was seriously interfering with Swiss temporal precision. The delay was to be an hour long, while airport workers hosed off the icy stuff that coated the Austrian Airways plane the night before, to the amusement of the passengers inside. If they were in a hurry to take off, they didn’t show it. It was two weeks before Christmas and the first snow of the season. We were all children. People even struck up conversations, which is how the Austrian mother-of-a-two-year-old from Graz in the seat next to me urged me to try punsch.

“It is glühwein I crave,” I told her, but her face fell.

She reckons punsch is more typically Austrian, so it was punsch and not glühwein I set out to find a few hours after arriving in Vienna. It wasn’t too difficult – at least not after 2pm, when the Christmas markets across town start opening. Judging from where people congregate in these open-air spaces, it’s the alcohol and food stalls – despite being in a minority – that make them stick around. The gift and craft stalls that sell everything from beeswax candles to Christmassy wreaths and tree decorations, from gingerbread objects to preserves, seem to be mere details.

The spicy punsch was top-tasting, and the set-up in the small courtyard was cosy with Christmas trees, lots of wood and gas lanterns for heat. Why Europeans insist on hanging out outside in temperatures barely licking zero Celsius, is a mystery. Maybe it helps punsch sales, and there’s something to be said for the way thawing powers punsch packs.

“Other markets use a kind of syrup, you know, like Starbucks makes hot chocolate and things with … that syrup,” the smiling woman behind the counter explained as she screwed up her face.

“We use some tea, spices and rum,” her colleague explained. “All natural ingredients.”

The punsch doesn’t taste much like black tea, so perhaps it’s more of a fruit infusion, and the rum is so subtle you don’t taste it until it kicks you. So that seems to be the deal with punsch.

The Rathaus punsch was the most spectacular, both for the heart-shaped mug (there were shoe shapes too) and for the amount of sugar it packed. My punsch was the envy of Lindsay, as the egg liquor version came with a heart-stopping wallop of cream and a drizzle of egg liquor, tasting like drunken custard. You pay a €4 deposit for the mug on top of the €4 or so for the liquid in it, and as we wandered around the market my attention was concentrated as much on keeping the liquid from spilling from the mug as it was on keeping the mug whole.

We also saw some guy convince a stranger to part with her mug for a sip of punsch, and then make off with the entire mug in a hurry. She did accost him and got it back. We wandered off to the ice skating rink to spectate, and fortunately there was a solid fence to hold on for stability.

It’s also possible to drink for a good cause, and punsch stalls by the Rotary Club and various charities (you can drink for a guide dog, for instance, and we also drank some deliciously home-made punsch for a nursing home, at 10 cents cheaper than the commercial market), but the bottom line of it all is that the cold makes you pee a lot and often.