An Austrian winemaker who was the guest the likes of Prince Charles at Clarence House and Bill Clinton when he was US president has produced a Valentine’s Day wine pressed on 14th February every year, ready for the romantic occasion the following year.

The romantic wine by Willi Opitz from the town of Illmitz, located in the Austrian state of Burgenland, was inspired by his high school sweetheart, whom he married.

Willi has been creating novel wines for special partners since he left his job as a mechanical engineer in 1995 after realising that producing Mars bars was not the job of his dreams.

His first big hit was with his 1995 CD release called ‘The Sound of Wine’ containing 15 tracks of wines undergoing fermentation. According to the winemaker, the inspiration behind the idea came because his grandfather had told him as a young boy that fermenting wine can tell him everything it has experienced during its year in the vineyard.

Since then, he has completed many new projects, including a range of Formula Wines, produced in partnership with McLaren.

He also created a Mr President wine dedicated to Bill Clinton, whom he met in Austria, which was placed in the book ‘The 1000 Finest Wines Ever Made’.

And his latest project in honour of St Valentine’s Day, which he said was inspired by his wife Maria, has also proved a hit.

In an interview with Newsflash, he said the Valentine’s Day wine “is something special because it is for someone special”.

He explained what truly encouraged him to start the project, saying: “The truth is, when I was a teenager, I gave a bunch of flowers to Maria when I started dating her. She was 16 years old and did not know what to do with a bunch of flowers, so I thought of something different for the next year.”

Willi continued: “It was only logical to try and surprise her with a nice sip of pudding wine. She was then hooked and we got married three years later.”

He added: “In times like the ones we experience at the moment, where communication in society gets colder and colder, we should think of people around us and try to warm them up with a nice bottle of wine combined with a nice dessert. The Valentine’s Day wine is the best way to do so!”

For the Valentine’s Day wine production, Willi uses his famous “reed wines” method, which he developed in the 1990s.

Healthy grapes of two white varieties, Muscat Ottonel and Welschriesling, and one red variety, Zweigelt, are left to air-dry for over seven months on a bed of reeds that are collected from a local lake, after which the grapes, with a considerably reduced juice content, are pressed and fermented in barrels.

The final product, which is called Schilfwein (reed wine) has earned Willi “the highest award in the wine world in London – The Late Harvest Winemaker of the Year”, which the whole family is extremely proud of.

Last year, he pressed 300 litres, which gave him around 900 bottles, all pressed on Valentine’s Day, and this Valentine’s Day, he is hard at work again, pressing the grapes for next year’s celebration.

Willi explained the genius behind his idea by saying: “Every good and quality-oriented restaurant in the world is having a Valentine’s Day dinner. And the typical speciality of such a dinner is a nice dessert. But, which winemaker in the world can offer a wine pressed exactly on Valentine’s Day?”

When asked about the Valentine’s Day wine’s characteristics, Willi revealed: “The red Valentine’s Day wine has a very fruity blackberry note, followed by chocolate notes on the palate, cherry notes too, and it’s a complete fruit cocktail. The nine per cent of alcohol makes the wine very enjoyable and adds a nice and fruity acidity to it.”

He explained what kind of food he would pair the wines with, saying: “It would be a wonderful combination with any chocolate desert, sticky toffee pudding, hot chocolate desserts, and absolutely perfect with blue cheese.”

In addition, he said that the white Valentine’s Day wine “has exotic notes of lychee and mango, and also some light caramel and light coconut aromas from the barrel fermentation, in addition to a lively and fruity lemony finish”.

Willi added: “It would be a perfect pairing to a creme caramel or a mango lychee panna cotta.”

Finally, the winemaker, who proudly revealed that wine enthusiasts from all over the world fancy the Valentine’s Day wine, said: “Everybody who loves wine should have a bottle in his cellar!”