At long last! Lemon cake and cloves, again

From the Nahe region of Germany: Paul Anheuser, 2000 Kreuznacher (" --er" indicating the town of Kreuznach) Kahlenberg (the vineyard, a site "first mentioned in 1499") Riesling (the grape) Spatlese (the harvest designation, in other words, second pass through the vines to pluck riper grapes). It proved a happy chance, to find a sixteen-year-old riesling on the shelves, for a retail price of only about $20. The color was golden amber, the aroma at long last --- after so many charming German rieslings that are all "racy" and zingy acidity and not much scent -- the lemon cake and cloves I remember from my first trade tasting ever. A supple mouthfeel balanced the sweetness. 

I always like to add a story to my wine thoughts, so there is this: I am trying Wuthering Heights again, for the third time in this life. Now I remember -- now I have reached the spot that annoys me. Unfortunately it is early on. The first narrator, Mr. Lockwood, gives place to the second narrator, Mrs. Dean, and then you must grapple with which characters in her telling are Hindley, and Hareton, and Heathcliff, and Cathy, and which were how old when the story begins in her memory, and which were how old or long dead from the first page of the first chapter. In real time, so to speak. In her introduction, Charlotte Bronte admits to the flaws in her late sister Emily's work. "How so?" you think. "It is a classic. Charlotte must be looking back on it very firmly, holding it to very high standards." But then, in that introduction you are also so distracted by the horrible brief chronicle of her two sisters' deaths from consumption, in a little more than five months from Christmas 1848 to spring 1849, that you resolve to overlook all flaws.    

The August moon

The miserable Lucia started a run of extreme bad luck about this time, of which the adventure or misadventure of the Guru seemed to be the prelude, or perhaps the news of her want of recognition of the August moon, which Georgie had so carefully saluted, may have arrived at that satellite by October. For she had simply 'cut' the August moon ....
E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia (1920) 

Strange bits of old knowledge always fascinate, don't they? Writing in 1920, E.F. Benson was still familiar with some sort of folklorish custom in which one "saluted" the August moon. No moon phase is specified, whether new or half or full; no one is saluting the January moon or the harvest moon. August, only. Failure to do so brings bad luck.

I don't know if July's second full moon, the blue moon, counts as part of August's too. Certainly it seemed rude, in a cosmic sense, not to sit out on the patio with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and admire "that satellite" as it rose, a gleaming mother-of-pearl gold against pale daylight blue sky, and then turned its usual, sophisticate's brilliant white-on-black. "Like a jewel hung in ghastly night," as Shakespeare said (Sonnet 27). You have seen better pictures of it, but far be it from me to "cut" it in any way.

The wine was 2013 Selbach-Oster (the producer) Zeltinger (the town) Himmelreich (the vineyard) riesling (the grape) kabinett (the harvest designation -- first time through the vineyard, to be followed, if the winemaker thought it wise, by 'spatlese' and 'auslese') halbtrocken ("half-dry"). It all means that a riesling's mild, kabinett sweetness was cut not only by the grape's natural acidity but also by a kind of firm, stony core. It's when wines have this that you enjoy drinking something more interesting than grape juice.

One final thought: I was all set, today, to go on a righteous rant about the Traveler Beer Company's beer, "The Illusive Traveler." I thought, for heaven's sake, modern craft beer is far, far too much in the hands of ignorant young men who still think, for example, that the raised-fist "Revolution" theme is cool (umm, hint: you won --  your glorious President is now going to outlaw coal -- "revolution" now means dissent against you), and who don't know grammar. "Illusive" Traveler? Dear things -- my fatheads -- do you mean elusive -- to elude, to be hard to find? Do you mean a traveler who isn't there, hence illusionary? Do you mean a traveler whose courage and adventurousness are to be copied, and is therefore illustrative?

Here is what Traveler Beer's marketing department says:

Driven by an unquenchable thirst for discovery, the Illusive Traveler often disappears for weeks at a time without telling a soul of his destinations. Not friends. Not family. No one. And each time he returns, he unveils new, wonderfully refreshing beers with great aplomb.

When pressed to reveal his travels, I.T. changes the subject or dodges the question by refilling the inquisitor’s pint glass with his latest recipe ....

I was fully ready to believe that a major company had created a product and done all the marketing and gotten the product on the shelves, all the while a glaring, end-of-civilizational error had escaped everybody's (that is, all the young men's) notice. But -- in fairness to myself, as Georgie would say -- and in fairness to all, I did my research first. Perhaps my salute of the moon protected me, or perhaps I was just well-trained by seventh-grade English composition teachers.

I opened the dictionary. It turns out there is such a word as "illusive," Adj.: illusory, unreal.

There. No rant. When I am wrong, I own it, as Lucia very nobly would say. This doesn't mean civilization isn't ending, for one wonders how it can exist without coal, or with a glorious President who loathes the thing itself. But at any rate we know that the young men in beer marketing departments still use dictionaries. I can't believe they knew the word for its own sake.

Look! the Bat Signal! And some wine

So far this spring and early summer has been lushly rainy. A few evenings ago we were treated to a display of mammatus clouds, the word, it seems, coming from the same Latin root that gives us "mammary." They do look breastlike. 

In snapping pictures, I was lucky enough to catch a seagull in mid flight. He poised himself perfectly so as to recreate the Bat Signal. 

                                                        

All the rain has made it simple to collect runoff for the patio plants. You place your ceramic seashell just so beneath the eaves, and wait. 

And you drink some delightful wines, whites for summer. 2011 Reinhold Haart Piesporter riesling. The aroma is, mysteriously, of bread; and then of lemon, and there is a bit of syrupy mouthfeel; then all throughout, a steely core which bespeaks riesling's ability to be so much more than just "oh they're sweet aren't they." Retail, about $18. 

Below, 2013 Naia, from Spain's Rueda region. If you are accustomed to the scentlessness of pinot grigios and many chardonnays, Spain's floral, cool, and slightly weighty white wines will be a nice change. The grape is verdejo, the most important white grape of Rueda, and not to be confused with either Verdelho, the (Portuguese) grape predominant in Madeira, or with Viura, a white grape of the Rioja region also known as Macabeo.*  

One more. 2014 Muga rose, to add to the collection of lovely roses trying to compete with Fenn Valley's "Cabaret." Still delightful, of course. The blend in our Muga, below, is primarily garnacha, which helps give it a bit of flavor that Mourvedre-based roses -- and many seem to be Mourvedre -- don't always have.

*We consult, as so often, Ron and Sharon Tyler Herbst's New Wine Lover's Companion, 2003.

Seeking

Every day brings us a new photo of a new atrocity. A man thrown from a roof; a man caged and burned.

What do we seek? We seek a way for human beings to pass over a terrible cusp in our history; a way to accept and testify that God is good, not merely "compassionate" or "merciful" but good. A good God who presides over a good and lawful world does not command atrocities.

Any human being can understand this. It doesn't require prophecy. Any prophet who did not understand it was wrong, or did not hear God, or both. The nice parts of a religion -- holidays, prayers, small, inculcated decencies -- no longer matter when its core shows itself to be nothing but hammer blows of violence and degradation. Forever. Unless the people trapped in it cross the cusp.  

And, one learns that they are doing so; by the thousands, even millions. 

Here. 

And here.

Also here.

And even here.



(By the way, it's "The Seeker" riesling, Mosel, 2012. Retail, about $13.)

2011 Maryhill Moscato di Canelli, and Elizabeth's German garden

 I want you to have a glass of this sweet and slightly tangy (that's "acidic" to professionals) moscato on a fine summer afternoon, perhaps this weekend, and then I want you to read a book on gardening.

The introduction to this book, Elizabeth and her German Garden (by Elizabeth von Arnim, or Marie Annette Beauchamp) is almost as interesting as the book itself, for it explains, briefly and lucidly, the life and works of our authoress, and why she happened to have two names. The lady was born in Australia Marie Annette Beauchamp, and was a cousin of the more famous, New Zealand born writer Katharine Mansfield (nee Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp). Reared in England, where she "was always called Elizabeth," she married, or "was persuaded to marry" a German count, and so became a rather young countess Elizabeth von Arnim. For the publication of her first book, Elizabeth and her German Garden, the former Miss Beauchamp acquired in 1898 a third name: for in the gentle but surely expiring tradition of lady writers even then, she was at first Anonymous.

The book was a huge success, so that for subsequent editions her name, or at any rate her German name, was permitted to grace the cover. The Garden was followed in later years by more books, a few of which we might know better. She wrote Mr. Skeffington, made into that great movie of the same name in the early 1940s with Bette Davis and Claude Rains; she wrote Enchanted April, made into a movie in the early 1990s starring actors not quite so well known.

All this we have from one R. McGowan, writing in San Jose on April 11, 1998. Apparently he or she is the one responsible for getting Elizabeth and her German Garden scanned into the files of Project Gutenberg as long ago as that. Indeed he closes with, "In the centennial year of this book's first publication, I hope that its availability through Project Gutenberg will stir some renewed interest in Elizabeth and her delightful work. She is, I would venture, my favorite author ...."

I don't think I'll count Elizabeth as my favorite author quite yet. Her rough diary of a year at her country estate is certainly a unique view into a strange and vanished world -- faint praise; any good book should be that -- but there is also something unpleasantly dreamlike in these cool, guarded, yet outlandish portrayals of family, guests, servants, routine, holidays, chores, and weird excursions. There is warmth in the garden, but only there. And even there, the reader who is also a gardener will not be able to follow her too far in her hobby, even in sympathy, unfortunately. Though she began as an absolute amateur, still she was the wife of a count, and had the means -- the pin money -- to order things like a hundred rose bushes at a time, and to speak of stream and woods. Like so many garden writers, where she says "garden," she means property, the estate. There is a big difference, even if one tries to rejoice for her.

The rough diary, set down from the beginning of May to the end of the next April, is one half given over to the garden, and one half to a chronicle of indoor domesticities, chief among them a long midwinter visit from Irais and Minora. These are two women whom Elizabeth would far rather not have left on her hands, especially Minora, who is merely a young relation of a friend, taken in as a favor because she is alone in Germany and requires chaperoning. The girl also has literary pretensions. She is gathering material for a book on Germany. Elizabeth and Irais find her ignorant, credulous, and yet absurdly timid when it comes to any chance for an authentic German adventure.

Such as, for instance, a sleigh ride to the Baltic coast in the depths of winter. Minora starts out happily enough with her two companions, but after six hours of the cold and a cold picnic and then the swiftly gathering darkness, and pop-eyed, faux innocent assurances from Elizabeth that the elderly coachman doesn't fall asleep and overturn the carriage too often, she turns desperate and drops broad hints that they ought to stop at a neighbor's house for the night and continue home in the morning. Upon that she is treated to a long, sumptuously composed speech from Irais about how vulgar and pushing such a visit would be, and how even if they all were such rubes as to dare it, she herself would promptly be seated in the most uncomfortable chair in the house, in the spot preordained for unexpected visitors who are also virgins of no rank. Granted Minora's idea was a little awkward, still the reader wonders if indeed German etiquette at this time was so atrocious, or if Irais was indulging in deviltry, or if Elizabeth was making the entire scene up for the sheer joy of invention.

Regardless, it makes one sympathize with Minora, even though perhaps she was sometimes an annoying chit. And, to be fair to Elizabeth, long country house visits must have worn on the hostess' nerves in any society or era where they were once commonly made. Elizabeth wanted to get back to her garden and her family privacy. Still, in setting the stage for this long and not very funny story, Elizabeth had told us that she also likes to take her truly wearisome summer guests to these same Baltic beaches. The great joke there is that the seacoast in summer swarms with mosquitoes, which spoil the expectations of visitors who had thrilled to the suggestion of refreshing ocean breezes. After that, they tend to pack their bags and go home. So, I think, would I. I think also I do not make Elizabeth one of my favorite writers, not just yet.

A couple of scenes, if they are not much warmer than any others, nevertheless ring with a likable and unmistakable truth. In one, the young wife, mother and gardener tells us what it was like, not only to have servants to do your work, but to be forbidden to do your own work -- even if it was work you loved:

I did one warm Sunday in last year's April during the servants' dinner hour, doubly secure from the gardener by the day and the dinner, slink out with a spade and a rake and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow surreptitious ipomaea [morning glory], and run back very hot and guilty into the house, and get into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my reputation.

This was the mistress of the estate, and she could not garden. In another scene, that same young mistress proves her mettle when it is time to sack one of those servants. One day a door to a parlor swings open and the governess, Miss Jones, is accidentally overheard criticizing her employers in a private talk with our Minora. She pronounces, in a general way, that most parents "are not wise," that most pious husbands including the present master were probably rakes as bachelors, and that it's a sore trial for the governess to have to be polite and "even humble" to such pompous fools. Elizabeth walks in to the parlor, icily invites Minora to tea, and tells the governess she "wants the children for a little while." The next day, Miss Jones is gone, flung out into the great world with no good references, we may be sure. No mention of consulting the husband, "the Man of Wrath," in all this. No need to, it seems.

R. McGowan's introduction tells us that in time, Elizabeth had to leave this idyllic home -- we never quite know where it is, except that it is fifteen miles from the Baltic -- and go on to a probably much more urban second half of life. (Back in England? We don't know.) After the Man of Wrath died, she circulated among people fine enough to introduce her to friends like H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, whose brother she married. Somehow, one doesn't see men like that mucking about in the compost days from any town, and knowing the names of a hundred roses, too.

The second marriage ended in divorce. With the outbreak of World War II, she fled to America, where she died in 1941.

Now of course the Garden is not all unpleasantly dreamlike, and mosquitoes and sacked servants. There is humor in it, and it would be unfair to leave you with no idea of it.

"I really think, Elizabeth," said Irais to me later, when the click of Minora's typewriter was heard hesitating from the next room, "that you and I are writing her book for her. She takes down everything we say. Why does she copy all that about the baby? I wonder why mothers' knees are supposed to be touching? I never learned anything at them, did you? But then in my case they were only stepmother's, and nobody ever sings their praises."

"My mother was always at parties," I said; "and the nurse made me say my prayers in French."

And there is the garden and the flowers, "which I have loved so much." (Even on the last page we hear a hint of a goodbye.)

"I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli."

I'm curious to know what Elizabeth's last novel, Mr. Skeffington, is like. Of course I have seen the movie, but I'd like to know if Skeffington shows some kind of arcing journey of the woman and the writer. I think it must, unless Hollywood transformed it sight unseen. From idyllic and adored German garden, the titled young mother, thirty, becomes a seventy-year-old telling the tale of a Jewish banker who barely escapes with his life from a Germany that now occupies another universe.

The noble grapes: riesling, part 2

The noble grapes: Riesling, part 1

The striving after ripeness explains German wine labels.

If a bottle of riesling is the product of that first harvest, it will carry the term Kabinett on its label. If it is a product of a second harvest, it will carry the term Spatlese (pronounced SHPAIT-lay-seh -- although people do struggle with this one, rendering it "Spall-teese" or "Spayte-lace," or, like me for a while, "Shpaht-lace"). If it comes from even a third harvest, it will be called Auslese, and will have been harvested in individual bunches. A fourth harvest gives us Beerenauslese (BA), meaning the gathering of individual grape berries left so long on the vine that they are not only very ripe but have been attacked by the beneficial mold botrytis, and so are even more shrunken and their sweet juices concentrated. Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) means the wine comes from the harvesting of individual grape berries fully dried (trocken) by the mold. Finally there is Eiswein, made from grapes harvested and crushed while frozen. The ice carries away the grapes' water content and the wine is therefore made from the sweetest, most acidic, most concentrated juices possible.

These six words therefore don't necessarily indicate the increasingly sweet taste of the wine; rather they annouce the level of ripeness of the grapes at harvest. Each higher level of ripeness will mean a richer-feeling wine, but only the three ripest styles -- Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, and Eiswein -- will invariably be sweet because the sugar levels in these grapes have been able to climb so high. The three lower levels of ripeness -- Kabinett, Spatlese, and Auslese -- can still be fermented completely dry.
And coping with these six words already means that we have in our hands a bottle of the highest quality of German wine, a Qualitatswein mit Pradikat or QmP, meaning quality wine with special characteristics. Having this also means that we hold in our hands the results of a sunny, warm year in the best German vineyards. If the year's weather was not so good, we might hold instead a Qualitatswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet or QbA, simply a quality wine from a specified region. German wine labeling laws lay all these standards down. A "QbA" is not allowed to announce the ripeness levels of its grapes, because they were not remarkable enough to brag about. It can only announce roughly where in Germany it is from.

All this still leaves a positive forest of German words on the labels of fine rieslings, on the labels of fine German wines in general. These comprise announcements not only about the region but about the district, collection of vineyards, and specific vineyard which made the wine. There are also announcements that the wine was bottled on the estate (address included), and proofs of its having passed inspection (the Amtiche Prufungsnummer, or A.P. testing number, the last two digits of which represent the year of testing).

Germany is anxious that you are shown exactly what you are getting in your riesling, because the very fact of growing grapes and making wine there is such a feat and a triumph. But where, for instance, in this QmP and QbA and A.P. and "spall-teese" complexity do we place our (probably) first experience of German wine -- the humble and inexpensive grocery-store Liebfraumilch?

Liebfraumilch, meaning "milk of Our Blessed Lady," is a QbA wine made of a blend of riesling plus other German grape varieties like Kerner, Muller-Thurgau, and Silvaner, the first two of which are crosses of the riesling grape themselves. Being of QbA designation means it is still a qualitatswein -- QbA wines sometimes specify only that on the label -- and therefore still above the category of Landwein or Tafelwein, what would be the everyday quaff of the German consumer except that it seems Germany doesn't produce much of anything ordinary to begin with. Most authorities agree that only about 5 or 10% of the country's wine production is not "qualitatswein," and almost none of the lower-tier stuff is exported.

So that means Liebfraumilch is high-quality product? I'll confess I have never actually tried it. Karen MacNeil in The Wine Bible is polite: it's "pleasant, basic, and slightly sweetish," she says. The best-known example is Blue Nun, which most people seem to remember, with a laugh, as something belonging to the 1970s. As of The Wine Bible's publication date (2001), Blue Nun was still "the largest-selling German wine in the English-speaking world."

Wow! Time flies when you're being professional

I attended my first closed-to-the-public wine tasting last week, in downtown Chicago. Just me, and a co-worker with many years' experience in the wine trade, and thirteen white-draped tables in a private room at an upscale restaurant in the River North neighborhood. We were the first to arrive and unfortunately began with table 13 and worked our way around the room backwards. Later, as more and more people arrived, our mistake caused us to bump into traffic going the right way. After several hours, as we took a break and sat down with some bread and cheese, I had a good look around and then asked my co-worker, "So is the wine industry mostly men?" And he looked at me and nodded.

The wines were almost all German rieslings, perhaps a hundred or more of them. Needless to say, on this interesting Thursday, I learned how to spit like all the other professionals. I do like rieslings, but I know my metabolism. A hundred one-ounce swallows, or even fifty, are going to incapacitate me, especially when my stomach is empty because I've walked off my breakfast going from the train station, into the raging wind tunnel that is Wacker Drive, and then up Clark street to NaHa. I think once or twice I may have bent toward the spit bucket, or even moved it, just when some other wine professional -- usually a man -- was going to launch into it also. Luckily this situation is unique in that they can't scold you. Oops. Sorry.

And my, I do like those sweet rieslings. The sweetness levels, in a German Quality wine "mit Pradikat" (with special characteristics) -- QmP -- go from Kabinett to Spatlese to Auslese to Beerenauslese to Trockenbeerenauslese. In each case, the descriptive tells us how sweet the grapes were at harvest: Kabinett grapes were harvested first, Spatlese gathered during a second harvest, Auslese during a third, and so on. As the wine maker waits and goes through his vineyard a second and third and fourth time, he is taking a risk. The time for the regular harvest, when he pulled in his Kabinett-stage grapes, is past; now he is hoping to find more grapes that are even riper, even sweeter, but not yet ruined by pests or rot or bad weather. By the time he harvests at the beerenauslese stage, he is picking individual grapes ("beere", berries) that are still in good shape. If he can even take grapes at a fifth harvest, he is picking them trockenbeerenauslese, TBA. The individual grapes have turned trocken, dry on the vine, in other words they are raisins. With most of their water content gone, they are extremely sweet. If he lets his grapes freeze and harvests them then, all the water content is caught up and lost through being frozen, and the pure remaining juice will then make the heavenly sweet dessert eiswein.

Many people avoid rieslings because they are sweet, but the wines are so delicious that I can't help but think that those who claim not to like them are simply suffering from the training that Jancis Robinson noted diplomatically in her book How to Taste: "the mass market," she wrote, "has been schooled to feel proud of liking something dry." Maybe we all grow up on such sweet drinks, and wine is so unfamiliar to us, that we think wine -- whatever it is, and whenever we encounter it -- should at least seem different to the taste buds. I've seen people take a taste of riesling, wince, and say, "It tastes like pop." Yes, some rieslings are flaccidly sweet, but the basic tastes of pop, sugar and acid, are not bad in themselves.

And there are dry rieslings. Even the sweetest of them could be fermented dry, if the winemaker liked. I tasted a few among the professionals a week ago -- all these distinguished continentals in suits, and a lanky British gentleman of indeterminate age, very pleasant, looking as if he had stepped out of an Ealing Studios film -- and they left me with that stones-in-the-mouth, tonic water feeling that I first recognized in brut champagne. Ah yes, I thought. So this is "dry." Lovely, if you like that sort of thing. But why not have a riesling?

Wine blogging Wednesday: Old World Rieslings

How quaint to go into our Way Back machine and remember Wine Blogging Wednesday, on a Wednesday.

[For information on German wine labelling, I am indebted to The New Wine Lover's Companion by Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst.]

Wine Blogging Wednesday is a "virtual wine-tasting" dreamed up four years ago by some good people in the wine trade (whom ... sshhh ... I had never heard of either).

But it's a delightful idea. Bloggers and wine enthusiasts try an agreed-upon wine -- the theme for the month -- one blogger "hosts" the tasting, and the notes are collected and linked at Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW). It so happens that the choice for May, my first time participating in this event, is Old World Rieslings, and rieslings are thus far my favorite wines.

I was lucky enough to be able to try a fine, rather pricey (for my budget) riesling at the store. The label says, all in one breath, Weingut Leo Schwab -- Winzermeister -- Weinbautechniker -- D54470 Bernkastel-Kues -- Saarallee -- Gutsabfullung -- and then, below the artwork, 2003er -- Bernkasteler Badstube -- Riesling Spatlese. Below that, Qualitatswein mit Pradikat, then some letters and numbers, then at the very bottom of the label, Mosel - Saar - Ruwer.


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German wine labels are famed for their specificity. The most important words on this label are Bernkasteler Badstube and of course, Riesling Spatlese. The latter phrase tells us that this is the riesling grape, picked at the second harvest when the grapes were just a little riper than they would have been if picked at the first harvest (kabinett). Bernkasteler Badstube introduces us gently into the complexities of German wine law, as it involves both production and labeling.

Like other European countries, Germany requires that wine assemble itself, so to speak, into certain quality categories and then announce its quality category on the label. Generally, the more precise the announcement of where a wine has come from, the higher its quality will be. Product of Germany means an okay wine. Wine from an Anbaugebiet (quality wine-growing region) is a little better. Wine from a Bereich (a subregion) is better still. Wine from a Grosslage (general site) within a bereich is still better. Wine from an Einzellage has come from a vineyard site or actual vineyard within a grosslage, and is therefore better still. (Are the grapes just supernaturally "better" because they have grown in smaller specified areas? No; what the designations mean is that the winemaker has been held to higher and more specific standards as he makes, or claims to make, wine from grapes, sites, and vineyards that historically ought to display great, and typical, quality.)

So our Bernkasteler Badstube would seem to be in the third tier of specificity for wine quality, almost but not quite to Einzellage level. It comes from a Grosslage in the Bereich of Bernkastel, which lies in the general region (Anbaugebiet) of Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. However, there is another mark of quality on the label, in the biggest print at the very top: Weingut Leo Schwab. Weingut means "wine estate," so this phrase is the equivalent of an English language label saying "So and So's Vineyard." Legally, it means that this riesling has been made only from estate-grown grapes -- which would seem to put it in the final and best Einzellage category.

After all this, how does it taste? There is nothing like a riesling. That honey-yellow color, that syrupy pour into the glass, the aroma of lemon cake and cinnamon; then a taste like sweet-tart apples, followed by a startling dry finish, reminiscent once again of cake -- you can almost taste the crumb.

I have met people who won't try a riesling, "because they're sweet, aren't they." I don't yet know what to say to them. And I begin to see where wine snobbery comes from.

The noble grapes -- gewurztraminer?

(Revised July 28, 2009)

When I was growing up, my parents were interested enough in wine to drink a little on special occasions and at dinner out, and to collect a few books on the subject. One of my favorites was a 1982 edition of Michael Broadbent's Pocket Guide to Wine Tasting, first published in London in 1968. I used to glance at it as a teenager, and found it great, if rather snooty, fun. I'm sure the author did not mean to be snooty. It's just that all those pages of up-close photographs of wine meniscuses (meniscii?), and careful descriptions of color gradations from ruby to red to blackberry to plum, and what they all mean, seemed exactly what it would not help you to have in your pocket at your next wine tasting. They would help deeply experienced professionals, perhaps. My favorite page in the book was the reproduced, handwritten facsimile of real tasting notes from "October 22, 1981, David Peppercorn's 50th birthday dinner, London W.1," complete with guest list. (Fascinating. Who was Serena?) The party flowed with fabulous wines, ending with a '31 Quinta do Noval, "the Everest of Vintage Port." I'm glad.

Anyway, early in this thin, very closely-printed book, Broadbent provides a list of the major wine making grapes, from the ordinary to the superb, says flatly that only four even of the noble varieties are absolutely the leading noble varieties -- cabernet (sauvignon), riesling, pinot (noir), and chardonnay -- and then simply places an asterisk beside each other noble variety as he runs through all on the next several pages. Blink and you might miss chenin blanc's asterisk. Chasselas, directly above, doesn't get one. ("Neutral and prolific vine. White.")

He also gives an asterisk to gewurztraminer, or did in 1968. That makes it noble. Other authors do not agree. Karen MacNeil, in The Wine Bible (1998), does not. Jancis Robinson, in How To Taste (2000), says only that the grape is considered noble in its home, Alsace, though "rather tiring" even there. Why tiring? Why not noble without disputes and silences?

A grape is noble if it creates excellent wine practically anywhere, even moreso if it creates wine capable of bottle-aging. It would seem we have a problem with gewurztraminer, on both counts. The grape thrives in only a few cool but sunny and dry climates, which lets out very large parts of the wine world as potential producers of fine bottles of it. Alsace, in eastern France, is its preferred place, New Zealand a good second best. Even Alsace's examples of gewurztraminer do not age much beyond five years (so say Ron and Sharon Tyler Herbst in The New Wine Lover's Companion). After that, it loses any bracing acidity and develops an "oiliness" which no longer refreshes.

So what's good about this variety to begin with? Its powerful, floral, tropical aroma, followed by its unexpectedly dry taste. Wine writers have a hard time fully putting into words gewurztraminer's scent, and when you take in your first noseful of it, you'll likely agree it is remarkable. "Clouds of Yves Saint Laurent's Opium," "Giorgio of Beverly Hills," "lychee," "rose petals," "sumptuous," and "face cream" are a few epithets -- and these are all from one writer (Oz Clarke). I would add jasmine, pineapple, and orange blossom. Different people could add almost any lush, fresh scent descriptor pertaining to blowing tropical flowers and juice-dripping, sun-filled fruits, and be right about gewurztraminer.

Unfortunately, that scent seems to be at once the grape's glory and its handicap. Devotees of it want hibiscus, Shalimar, and mango bursting out of their glass; too much of that is precisely what strikes connoisseurs as tiring, "blowzy," even "embarrassing." But if gewurztraminer is grown and vinified to be subtler, it loses its raison d'etre. I have tasted California examples -- not from Alsace and therefore, of necessity, not the wine at its best -- and they seemed reminiscent only of ginger ale. Ginger is a spice and gewurz means spice or "perfumed," so perhaps even here the poor, half-noble thing is trying.

Another difficulty with gewurztraminer is that it is fussy in its growing requirements. Oz Clarke writes that because it buds early it can be harmed by late spring frosts, incidentally a hazard of nice cool climates. But, because it ripens at mid-season, any unusual early summer warmth will prompt it to reach hopelessly high sugar levels, resulting in a "flabby" wine lacking good acidity. Ideally it wants a perfect combination of steady sunshine and cool temperatures. It doesn't like too much rainfall, either. (The answer to this almost arithmetical problem, sun + cool climate + dry weather equals, always in all wine books, Alsace.) And, as with all grapes but particularly those asterisked noble ones, a winemaker wanting to produce a flavorful beverage must keep his vines' yield low. Too many grapes will all be bland and watery, while a well pruned vine will direct its strength into fewer but better berries. Gewurztraminer, finicky as it is concerning climate, surprisingly yields a lot when it is happy. So the careful grower faces high labor costs in keeping it under control -- all to eventually put out a wine that frankly didn't have much chance to do really well outside a few regions, and that, if it does well, has an "in your face" personality harder to sell compared to better known, tamer chardonnays and pinot grigios anyway. The result is, well, gewurztraminer. not widely grown because hard to grow well, hard to pronounce, for many people hard to like.

Yet, it endures. It seems to have originated in the Alto Adige region of northeastern Italy, specifically near the village of Tramin which gives it its name. Maybe. Historical records first mention Traminer around the year 1000 A.D., but is this our gewurztraminer, or is it an almost identical if slightly less perfumed twin properly called savagnin rose? Scientists who study grape genetics are not sure. Alsace has grown a "Traminer" since the middle ages, calling it either by that name or, after 1870, gewurztraminer too. Since 1973, though, Alsace has in turn dropped the name Traminer completely. This is to avoid confusion ... while just across the border Germany still uses both.

And wine writers still disagree on its nobility. Worthy of an asterisk? Michael Broadbent thought so. Too perfumed? Not age-worthy enough? Jancis Robinson and Karen MacNeil thought so. I find that, to begin exploring gewurztraminer, it's worthwhile just to try a $5 or $6 California bottle. It will at least be more interesting to drink with dinner than another thousandth pot of tea or, still duller, water or ginger ale. In time, try an Alsace version, and learn more. Oz Clarke recommends it as a good wine to pair with heavy duty foods, whether Alsace's own roast goose, onion tart, or smoked fish, or Chinese or Thai cuisine loaded with ginger, lemongrass, and coconut. In fact -- those are real party foods, aren't they -- host a party, where you introduce your friends to "luscious," "head spinning" gewurztraminer, and everybody practices saying the name. Don't be shy. Pronounce everything. Ge WURZ tra mee ner.

Oh, and don't be shy. Invite Serena. And me.

The noble grapes: riesling, part 1

"Blindingly delicious." That's just one of the typical terms used by authors of wine books to describe riesling -- the magnificent, the glorious, the perfect, the stunning, the incomparable. The woefully underappreciated. We might go out on an allegorical limb and say that among wine writers riesling is to other grapes what Barack Obama is, among political writers, to other politicians -- except no one could imagine that gentleman woefully underappreciated.

What accounts for riesling's glories, and for their neglect among wine drinkers? The grape naturally has a combination of sweetness and high acidity, which makes a delectable combination in the glass. Think of bunches of soft drink grapes, Sprite perhaps, hanging on a vine: most of us love the balance of sugar and acid, and would regard a natural product like that as a wonder. Exactly so with riesling. Rieslings are also low in alcohol, so they remain refreshing, crisp, and bright whereas more potent wines like chardonnays seem thicker-bodied and apt either to overwhelm a meal or to induce sleepiness (or both) after a glass or two. Rieslings have vivid lemon-cake-and-clove aromas and burst with fruity, apple-pear flavors, which make a dry riesling especially such a sparkling and satisfying accompaniment to food.

The adjective often used in connection with riesling is "racy." This makes sense on an instinctive level, but it is hard to put into other, more solid words. Speed, lightness, quickness all come to mind with the word "racy," and it may be that the word makes best sense when you try to apply it to your memories of other white wines. Chardonnay, racy? No. Pinot grigio -- no. Sauvignon blanc, not exactly -- white zinfandel, no. Riesling -- somehow, yes.

Try it ... but here we encounter riesling's problem. It's woefully underappreciated. People often won't try it, and for this wine writers blame the wine's reputation as unfailingly and boringly sweet. Karen MacNeil in The Wine Bible says that this reputation was fully deserved in the years after World War II, when German producers made oceans of sugary rieslings to appeal to the taste of American soldiers occupying Germany, and to the taste even of the German public, who were starved for sweets because sugar had been rationed during the war. Jancis Robinson in How to Taste says that some German winemakers kept churning out the sweet stuff, out of a pure cynical desire to make money, for decades after.

Things have long since changed, and now Germany does put out an endless array of rieslings including the dry and even the really bone-dry; but as my old favorite Willie Gluckstern hollers in The Wine Avenger, a dry riesling is not therefore the correct One, its appearance constituting our sign from heaven that now it's okay to try It. The riesling grape has a sweetness whose balance with acidity makes the delight of the wine. Many foods and, indeed, any cooking process is going to add sweetness to what we taste -- toast is caramelized bread, a seared steak is caramelized meat -- and we don't turn away with a shudder from either taste experience.

The circumstances under which riesling comes to perfection, the perfection of acid-sugar balance and that elusive "raciness," are a part of the wonder. Riesling is quite the snow princess. It grows farther north of the equator than any other noble grape. In fact Germany, and we are talking about southwest Germany, marks the northermost limit of viticulture anywhere. Riesling's favored regions lie at the same latitude as Mongolia and Newfoundland (Karen MacNeil, The Wine Bible). Grapes can only survive here when they are planted on the south-facing hillsides of river valleys, where the river itself moderates the cold weather, cold air runs down and away from the vines, and the southern exposure catches as much summer sun as possible. The ripening process is downright tortuous, and acidity in the grape is never a problem (imagine biting into a nice, hard little unripe anything. Eeew.) Riesling's natural sugar levels come to the rescue in the making of the final, palatable product, especially in warm sunny years when the killing frosts of autumn may be postponed so long that a grower may go through his vineyards more than once, harvesting a second or a third time or -- keeping his fingers crossed -- maybe even a fourth or a fifth. With each harvest, the grapes will be just that bit riper, and will make just that bit fuller, richer, more acid-balanced wine.

The noble grapes: Riesling, part 2

Refreshing my riesling memory

Several months after the wine shop closed, we on the ex-staff went out for a glass of wine.

As I have been out of the wine business for several months now, I have lacked the opportunity to sample the variety or quality of wines I used to. What a pleasant refresher, therefore, to drink a few nights ago a good German riesling. I've been buying Washington state and California rieslings, and one standby from Germany (St. Gabriel), all from the grocery store and all under $7. This time I drank a glass of unknown provenance -- I couldn't politely peek at the label or ask questions, because I was being treated and besides, the restaurant was really dark -- but definitely authentic and definitely from what we might call the fatherland. The nice man pouring said so.

Comparing the taste of this riesling to more recent purchases was like comparing a story that has a beginning, and a middle, and an end, to stories that begin and end but tell nothing in between. (Are there stories like that? Well, imagine there are, for the moment.) My grocery store rieslings start out with a bit of pale gold color, and a bit of tanginess in the smell; then they taste sweet and then they leave that mouthwatering acidity after I swallow. That's it.

A good German riesling tells the full story. In this one, I saw the glorious, rich, amber-gold color, and smelled that sharp lemon cake-and-clove smell. The missing middle of the story was fruit, which is what lesser rieslings lack. I tasted what seemed like an orchard full (pardon the exuberance) of delicious, almost thick, peach and lemon-apricot fruit. Do I dare surmise that this example might even have been an Auslese, that is, a wine whose grapes were plucked in enticingly ripe bunches during the third harvest in a good year? There's no one to correct my guess so I'll let it stand. ... And then came riesling's typical acidity, not tongue-curlingly alone but just in balance with fruit and sweetness, and all as it should be. I think.

It made for a lesson in what wines can be, and in what they sometimes are not. It was, I suppose, a lesson in terroir. Wine writers say that of all the noble grapes, riesling is just about the most "transparent," meaning most able to convey something of the soil and climate in which it grows. Oz Clarke writes, "The ability to translate the vineyard into the glass through the medium of winemaker and vine is what makes Riesling so endlessly fascinating" (Oz Clarke's Grapes and Wines, p. 194). My California and Washington state examples seem, in retrospect now, to have translated into the glass all the reasons wine writers give explaining why riesling does not generally do well outside its native Germany. "Early ripening ... when planted in a hot climate, its juice becomes quickly overripe and flabby" (Jancis Robinson, Wine Course). "Few areas [outside Germany] really seem to have got the hang of it" ... "most are dull and bland" ... "so many New World leaders are basically hot countries, too warm for successful Riesling" (all Oz Clarke, Grapes and Wines).

One place, though, that is making fine rieslings these days is Australia, hot though it is. Clarke mentions Australia's Eden and Clare Valleys specifically as producing what he calls one of the three "benchmark" styles of the wine, the other two being of none other provenance than Germany and Alsace (in eastern France), where we would expect benchmark styles. It seems that the two valleys' "convoluted topography," cool nights, and high altitudes replicate German conditions well enough to make riesling happy there. Clarke is willing to reproduce illustrations of two Australian riesling wine labels in Grapes and Wines, which certainly looks like an endorsement: Mount Horrocks is one, Pipers Brook Vineyard another. He also reproduces an illustration from, and says nice things about, Kiona White Riesling from Washington State, which would seem to endorse the possibility that there is hope for other New World rieslings.

If you try any of them, I would suggest a benchmark in evaluating them: ask if they tell the whole story, beginning, middle, and end. Sweetness, fruit, and acidity. (Of course, in all of the above we have ignored the existence of dry rieslings.) The happy news is that all of your explorations should not break the bank in these difficult economic times. Wine writers who praise riesling to the skies -- and they all do -- also note that it remains so generally unpopular as to be generally a great buy. A wine so splendid and so difficult to get right shouldn't also be a steal, but there it is. "There's only enough top quality wine available for those of us who crave it," Clarke says.

I'm guessing, therefore, that those limited amounts of top quality product, comparative bargains though they'll turn out to be, are not likely to be tempting me from my grocery store shelves anytime soon. I may have to expand my hunting grounds ... but at least I begin to understand why.

2004 August Kesseler spatburgunder (pinot noir)

Let's decipher the very plain German label. 

The year 2004 and the name in big print, August Kesseler, are self-explanatory. The bottom of the label says "pinot noir," which also helps. 

As to the rest, including the fine print laid out sideways around the back of the bottle. Erzeugerabfullung means bottled by the producer, which is Weingut (winery) August Kesseler. Qualitatswein: legally this is a middle-tier quality of wine, made under more stringent conditions than a table or country wine, but under less stringent conditions than a Qualitatswein which has also earned the right to call itself either a Qualitatswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet (QbA), wine from a guaranteed specific place, or a Qualitatswein mit Pradikat (QmP), wine of guaranteed place and special characteristics.

It's trocken (dry), from Assmannshausen, a village in Germany's Rheingau noted for its -- guess what -- red wines made from spatburgunder (pinot noir). This word incorporates both the German spat, meaning late, and the word burgundy, which is of course the French province that is pinot's home. "Late" refers to the grape's habit of ripening late, although Ron and Sharon Herbst tell us that Germany also grows another variant of pinot noir which ripens early and is called Fruhburgunder (The New Wine Lover's Companion). 

My notes:

russet-purple, autumn leaves color
cedar scent 
silk feel 
plum juice, plum skin 
tiniest bit of earth or smoke

I'm told, and reading in books confirms, that the spatburgunders of Assmannshausen are vinified in the French style, that is, they are meant to be light, delicate, and subtle, and not the roaring California grape jelly bombs that pinot lovers now complain about. Indeed, it seems a German pinot noir can't help but be delicate and subtle, since Germany's climate and the mountainous terrain of its grape growing regions gives pinot the long, cool growing season it needs. Pinot is the fragile, frustrating, siren grape. If it can struggle slowly to some ripeness without giving up the natural acidity which balances sugar levels, gives interest, and eventually helps the wine age in bottle, then it will come through at its best. And pinot, at its best, comes from cool, hilly places: Burgundy, the Rheingau, Oregon, the cool coastal valleys of California. Elsewhere, in hotter, flatter lands, including elsewhere in California, intense heat and sunshine send any grape's sweetness zooming up to boring plushness in no time, wiping out its acid levels and resulting in, well, the "California style" -- dark color, high alcohol (all that fermented sugar), and unctuous jamminess.  

This August Kesseler was not at all unctuous, was instead very lovely. (A customer at Ye Olde wine Shoppe once got irate with me because I used words like "lovely" and "nice" to describe a wine. "That means nothing to me," she fumed. However, I only used those vague words because she had already told me she knew nothing about wine and so didn't want to hear any jargon like "acidity" or "tannin." That too "meant nothing to her." How on earth do you describe a wine, or any product at all, to someone who forbids the use of language? "Well you old battle axe, it's not chocolate milk"? But one mustn't alienate the customer.)

Yes, lovely. It seems to me that with a little experience you can begin to distinguish a good wine from a more commonplace one -- and even here, we are not talking about $30 or $50 wines, although Kesseler languished on the shelf at $25 -- by the way a good wine tastes almost like a food. Wine writers will gabble about wine being a food when they are trying to defend its not being a drug, a depressant, a mere alcohol delivery system. They'll cite studies about its healthful properties and so forth. But a good wine is foodlike in another way. It can be as interesting as a food, can seem to have the varied tastes, textures, and aromas of something solid. It can tempt you back for sip after sip just for its own sake, not at all for mere purposes of study and cogitation. And if the alcohol levels are normal, rather than California jam jar style (there is a wine called Jam Jar, a sweet syrah), your head will stay nice and clear too, and you'll be able to enjoy your actual meal into the bargain.

If you can find August Kesseler spatburgunder from Assmannshausen, snap it up, but do be careful about serving temperature. It must be just cool enough -- too cold, say straight from the fridge, and it becomes thick, sluggish, and grainy-gummy, too warm and it turns harsh and spiky, as do all warm red wines. Take your bottle from the refrigerator on a warm summer day, pour the wine into a glass, and let it sit for fifteen minutes. That should be just about right.

Retail -- originally, $25; alas, now $9.99 on the closeout rack. No one is going to plunk down serious money for (triple threat) an unknown German red.

For more on German wines, you might consult the blog Schiller Wine, especially the article on Walter Schug's journey from Assmannshausen to California's Carneros AVA.

Six rieslings ...

... plus a few other nice wines, too. When I am swirling and sipping along with two salesmen in an upstairs office at 10:30 in the morning, jotting shorthand about wholesale prices and "case one" deals, my actual tasting notes are reduced to the minimum. Smiley faces here, a "meh" there summarize things. (Consult this link for a brutally honest but funny recounting of the way the "Three-Tier Schnook system" determines what wines your local store will carry. The Schnook article is ten years old, but its author, a wine importer, maintains a more current blog titled "The Amazing Misadventures of Captain -- Recovering -- Tumor Man," whose subject you can probably guess.)

Thusly:

Villa Wolf Gewurztraminer -- a grim-faced "smiley," and a VC for "varietally correct" which I think it was. Smell the lush floral perfume, feel the slippery texture, taste something like grown-up ginger ale. Fine I am sure, but a gewurztraminer is not a personal favorite yet. Retail, about $10.

Villa Wolf Dry Riesling -- big smiley. Lemon cake, cinnamon, pineapple, all crystal clear and sweet-and-acid. Nice. Retail, about $10.

Villa Wolf Pinot Gris -- big smiley -- peaches and a dry finish, and then there is the novelty of a German pinot gris. I was advised that this was "not made in the blowsy style of Alsace." But since when are Alsace wines blowsy? I thought they were steely and austere. Retail, about $10.

Villa Wolf represents the value buys of the Dr. Loosen (pronounced LOH-zen) and J.L. Wolf wine estates, both run by Ernst Loosen. Villa Wolf sources its grapes from the Pfalz (experts instruct us to think warmish weather and a large choice of grapes growing in sandy soil), Dr. Loosen from the Mosel valley (think cold weather, and riesling only, growing on chunks of slate, only); and here we venture a little bit into the geography of German wine. It all has to do with the Rhine river and its tributaries, and to the difficulty of growing and ripening grapes in a latitude as far north as Newfoundland or Mongolia.

The Rhine rises in Switzerland and flows north through Germany to the North Sea, joined gradually on its journey by the Main, the Nahe, and the Mosel rivers. Following the river from south to north, the wine districts are the Pfalz, the Rheinhessen, Nahe, the Rheingau, the Mittelrhein, and finally the Mosel, near the city of Koblenz. Where maps of the Rhine reach Bonn, wine districts stop and mapmakers -- at least those drawing for wine books -- allow the great river to flow off the page to oblivion.

Before oblivion, however, mapmakers pay careful attention to that northernmost region, the Mosel. It is named for that tributary, which empties into the Rhine at Koblenz after being fed by its two smaller streams, the Saar and the Ruwer. This is why bottles of wine from the area are cleverly labeled "Mosel-Saar-Ruwer." (By the way, the fact that rivers get their start as obscure murmuring burbles in forests and mountains, and then flow and broaden until they empty into a larger body of water, is strange to me. The Chicago river flows inland from Lake Michigan, because engineers long ago made it do so in order to spare the lake urban pollution. It has always seemed sensible to me that any large expanse of water should dump itself into a thirsting land. Quite wrong.) Anyway, all along the Rhine's system from Basel to Bonn, wherever a river's bend exposes a plot of land on the slopes above to the sun, even to reflected light from the glimmering water, grapes, especially riesling, are grown. The Mosel has always been the primest real estate in all of Germany -- for some palates, the primest in the world -- because its combination of slate ground, tall slopes, cool weather, and the perfectly sweet-acid riesling grape which enjoys all those conditions, create the most "thrilling, delicate, transparent" wines imaginable. As we move on to the next five selections, we enter this holy ground. Eventually -- and, dear things, it may not be today -- we'll have to try to understand how exactly one tastes delicacy and transparency.    

Dr. Loosen "L" Riesling -- your friendly local liquor store riesling, the one with the tidy, elegant swooping "L" on the plain white label. It's the step-up, "entry-level" wine (sshhh ... perhaps all of today's examples are step-up, entry level wines?) for those moving beyond Liebfraumilch. In my notes Dr. L earns a vapid-looking smiley. Pleasant, a notch drier than the below-entry-level bottles. Familiar. Retail, about $12.

Dr. Loosen Blue Slate Kabinett Riesling -- this one gets a grim smiley right beside another which looks moderately cheered. The wine grew on me. "It's aging, you'll get that petrol aroma," I was told, and I did. Petrol, honey, thick sweetness, a twist of acidity at the end. It must be good, better than my cryptographs would indicate, because once this particular vintage is gone, the price of the new one will almost double. Retail, about $10; next vintage, retail, about $18.

Dr. Loosen Red Slate Dry Riesling -- big smiley. A jump in expense. I don't suppose I have sampled a very dry riesling since attending my first trade tasting, where I found them strange and almost beside the point compared to the luscious, sweet versions. But the lemon, cinnamon, and honey aromas. the clean, fresh, fruity acidity and the dry finish were all delightful -- almost champagne-like. Not surprisingly the wine cries out, as rieslings are wont to do, for food. Retail, about $15.

More on Dr. Loosen Red Slate riesling

Robert Weil Riesling Tradition -- another jump in expense. I was told Robert Weil is a demi-god in the world of German wine, and that this sample was the treat of the eight on the table. He was spoken of as if he still lived, but it turns out he founded his estate in the 1870s, having bought it from an Englishman in the days when English gentlemen making the Grand Tour found everything in Germany wholesomely Gothic and the people charming and sentimental, and wanted their own bucolic piece of the action. (Think Jo's suitor, Mr. Bhaer, in Little Women. " 'Ach, mein Gott!' he exclaimed. 'Yes, we Germans have sentiment, and we keep ourselves young mit it!' ") Today Robert Weil is run by the fourth generation of the family, but is owned by a Japanese conglomerate. Go figure. My notes on this riesling say only "acidic -- meh?" Perhaps by now I had palate fatigue, but I'm sorry to say this wine struck me as having little personality. Perhaps it was transparent. Retail, about $22.

Dr. Loosen Wehlener Sonnen Spatlese -- yet another jump in expense. I gave it a healthy-sized smiley, and several question marks to stand for a rich taste and texture I couldn't quite describe, accompanying the lemon cake, the spice, and the honey. "Meaty," could it be? Delicious. Retail, about $29.

Again, by this point palate fatigue -- and the awareness that time is flying, we're done, these salesmen want an answer and we all have other work to do -- may have prevented my doing the wine complete justice. Good rieslings are enchanting but difficult. How in the world are we to taste and appreciate that prime quality, "transparency," defined as the wine's ability to show the characteristics of the place it came from, or "delicacy" too? Might not an inexperienced drinker react to such ethereal qualities with a confused meh?

While we are venting our confusions, I may as well say that I do believe the sales sheet I was given, listing all these offerings from one to eight, included a typo from which we may learn something new. Our $29-number 8 should have been called "Dr. Loosen Wehlener Sonnenuhr" Spatlese, not simply "...Wehlener Sonnen___ Spatlese." Wehlener Sonnenuhr is the vineyard -- "the sundial of [the town of] Wehlen" -- where this wine comes from. It happens that there are three Mosel vineyards named for a Sonnenuhr, a sundial, in their midst, and all three lie along that stretch of the river called, cleverly, the Mittel-(middle) mosel. The other two are the Brauneberger [from the town of Brauneberg] Juffer-Sonnenuhr, and the Zeltinger [ditto, Zelting] Sonnenuhr. Karen MacNeil in The Wine Bible explains:

The huge sundials that give them their names were built more than a century ago in the sunniest part of three excellent slopes so that vineyard workers would know when to stop for lunch for the day. Because the vines in the vicinity of the sundial also got the most sun (and made the richest wine), the areas around the sundials soon came to be considered separate vineyards. Today the sonnenuhr vineyards are among the best along the Mosel. Each has multiple owners who possess tiny plots. Some 200 wine estates [as of 2001] own pieces of the Wehlener Sonnenuhr. 

Ah so. This sort of thing helps in deciphering German wine labels, which look terrifyingly wordy but are meant to tell you absolutely everything you deserve to know about your purchase. Open up a recent Wine Spectator, for example, and pick a riesling from the long columns of reviews at the end of the magazine. April 30, 2011, page 122: "Joh. Jos. Prum, Riesling Spatlese Mosel Wehlener Sonnenuhr 2009." Bingo. There's one of our three sundial vineyards again, only this time the producer is not our friend Dr. Loosen but Joh. Jos. Prum -- no doubt, one of the 200 estates (and J.J. Prum is major league) that own a piece of the bucolic action.

A few more minor notes. Have we noticed that after sampling eight good German wines and chronicling several "jumps in expense," we have only just reached the $30 price point? It's often the same if you care to browse more diligently through lists of recommended German bottlings at the end of any issue of the Wine Spectator. You'll find lovingly favorable comments along with curiously low prices -- around $21 is common -- followed by assurances that you may age this sample for five years, or even ten. We may hesitate before plunking down $20 on a single bottle of an unknown quantity, but to be advised you may age the incognito is to get a signal that this a very good value for your money. It may also signal, after all these years, that German wines are still largely unwanted because everybody thinks they're oversweet, mid-'70s Blue Nun dreck.   

On the other hand, some of them apparently still are oversweet dreck. Germany is a big place. Not every vine sunning itself above every river-bend turns out fruit that is delicate and thrilling. Wine writers claim that when Germany revised its wine labeling laws in the early 1970s, far too much poor, high-yield, flavorless stuff hauled in from huge growing regions was allowed to call itself Qualitatswein; Jancis Robinson even dismisses, or used to, the entire QbA category -- wines that announce in general merely where they are from -- as the country's "shame." For his part Hugh Johnson, in his very handy 2010 Pocket Guide to Wine, chimes in with right thinking about one of those huge regions, whose name looks so precise and meaningful on a terrifyingly wordy label. Of  Niersteiner Gutes Domtal, which you have probably seen on a local shelf just before your eyes glazed over, he commands: "avoid."

Will do. But even eight years ago in the third edition of her Wine Course, Ms. Robinson acknowledged that "the German wine business is in turmoil, thank goodness." It still seems to be. While we're avoiding Niersteiner Gutes Domtal, we should be aware, for example, that the next category up from those "shameful" QbAs (now simply Qualitatsweins), the QmPs or Qualitatsweins mit Praedikat (mit special characteristics, namely the grapes' level of ripeness at harvest, kabinett, spatlese, auslese, and so on) are now just called Praedikatsweins. Does it matter? Yes, if we want to decipher German labels correctly in 2011. Head spinning yet? Good. Then be aware that the newest trend in Germany is for very good producers to raise and harvest their grapes as if they were going to label them with the familiar kabinett, spatlese, and so on, but then to define them only as Qualitatswein on the label so that they are free, legally, to ignore the whole ripeness-level thing and concentrate on vineyard and terroir instead. (How about now?) German law doesn't bother much about the specifics of terroir for wines that say "we're only humble QbAs," so this leaves good makers of what might have been Niersteiner-level glop free to craft most interesting and tasty wines from bits of land that used to be ignored as such. Bits of land, especially, outside the sacred Mosel which American drinkers still fixate on. Knowing this will help you pass the pop quiz I now give you, based on a random pick at the back of this month's Wine Spectator. Thusly:

2009 Baron zu Knyphausen Riesling Qualitatswein Rheingau Erbacher Steinmorgen. Retail, about $60, and a whopping 95 points. So much, I should think, for the Qualitatsweins being Germany's shame. But the question is, what is it?

Above, the three-tier schnook system in action. Note the absence of vintage years on the provided sales sheet. The fact that I forgot to jot them down from all eight labels is my own fault.

For more on German wines, see the blog Schiller Wine, which is invaluable.

2011 Two Princes riesling

Delightful as rieslings always are, though this one was just plain sweet, and did not have the startling, sophisticated lemon cake-and-cinnamon effects that more exalted rieslings do. I must confess, I chose it for the label. And the provenance (Germany, specifically Nahe.) And the price -- retail, about $9. 

Customer story: middle aged, in the act of taking a pinot grigio from the shelf, says she brought the same to her family's Thanksgiving and her elderly mother didn't like it. "I can't drink this!" "Mom, it's a Robert Mondavi pinot grigio. It's delicious."

"I can't drink this. Look in my refrigerator, there's a bottle of wine in there. I'll have that. It's a riesling."

"Mom. That one is from last year."

"So? It was never opened."

Middle-aged daughter dutifully opened the riesling that had been in the fridge for a year. Elderly mother sipped it happily, pronouncing it far finer than the fresh pinot grigio.

Telling me the story, middle aged daughter rolled her eyes and laughed. "I'm convinced it's the taste buds." She meant that old age wreaks havoc on them.

I weighed the story in my mind as I watched her depart. A very reputable but mass-produced California pinot grigio, not a grape to go tiger shooting with, versus a riesling -- unknown to be sure, but still -- a grape admired for age-worthy sugars and acids, that had been abundantly chilled for a year.

"Convinced it's the taste buds"? Yes. Yes, it may have been just that.

More on Two Princes here.

2011 Romantic riesling

Day off. Picnic. Zoo (again!). Conservatory. A bit of fog over the city. Lovely.

 

Retail, incidentally, about $12.