I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I missed the turning for Sudoststeiermark by a good fifteen miles, ending up in what I can only describe as a very committed conversation with a local farmer about his prize-winning pumpkins. My sat-nav had given up the ghost somewhere past Graz, and I, in my wisdom, had decided that "how hard can it be to follow signs for wine country?" was a sensible navigation strategy. Reader, it was not.

By the time I finally rolled up to the property, I was forty minutes late, slightly hysterical, and carrying a five-kilo pumpkin that the farmer, a chap called Manfred with eyebrows like hedgerows, had insisted I take as a "welcome to Styria" gift. He'd flagged me down originally to tell me I'd gone wrong, then spent twenty minutes explaining the terroir of his vegetable patch while his dog, a suspicious dachshund called Kaiser, judged me from beneath a wheelbarrow.

The owner of the holiday home, a wiry woman in her sixties called Hildegard, opened the door with the resigned expression of someone who has waited for many lost Britons. She looked at the pumpkin, looked at me, and said, "Ah. You have met Manfred." It was not a question. She helped me wrestle my luggage and my vegetable into the hallway, then produced a glass of something golden and restorative without my asking. "This is for the shock," she said, though whether she meant the journey or Manfred remained deliciously unclear.

Hildegard, I quickly learned, was a woman of strong opinions and minimal filter. She showed me round the property with the brisk efficiency of a sergeant major, pausing only to deliver verdicts on various local characters I'd likely encounter. The neighbour who kept peacocks: "He thinks he is living in a French film. He is not." The man who ran the nearest Buschenschank: "His wine is honest. His jokes are not. You will laugh anyway." She had a way of pronouncing "anyway" that made it sound like a warning.

The pumpkin, meanwhile, sat on the kitchen counter like a silent reproach. Hildegard caught me eyeing it. "Manfred enters them in competitions," she said. "He talks to them. He says it helps them grow symmetrical." She paused, considering. "Perhaps this is why he has no wife." I snorted into my wine, and she permitted herself a small, satisfied smile.

That evening, determined to make amends for my late arrival, I walked to the village to find dinner. The Buschenschank was exactly as advertised: rough wooden tables, a view of vines descending into mist, and the proprietor, a bear-like man called Franz, who greeted me with a handshake that suggested he'd spent decades crushing grapes with his bare hands. He took one look at me and said, "You are the pumpkin English." News travels fast in Styria, apparently.

Franz's "honest" wine was indeed honest: blunt, unapologetic, and rather wonderful. His "not honest" jokes involved a lengthy anecdote about a confused British tourist who'd once asked for "the local beer" and been directed to his own cellar, where he'd spent forty minutes befriending a cat. "This was you, perhaps?" Franz asked, deadpan. I admitted it was not. "Good," he said. "That one we still cannot find."

By the time I stumbled back to the property, slightly wine-happy and carrying a jar of pumpkin seed oil that Franz had pressed into my hands, I realised something. The mishap, the farmer, the eyebrow-raising landlady, the comedian vintner: this was already the holiday. Not the scenery, though that was lovely. Not the wine, though that was better. The people, with their glorious specificity and complete lack of performance for tourists, had made the first evening unforgettable.

Hildegard had left a note on the kitchen table. "Breakfast things in the fridge. Do not talk to the pumpkin. It encourages Manfred." I laughed, poured myself a glass of water, and raised it briefly to my vegetable companion. Some holidays you plan. Others, you simply survive the first day and realise you've already won.