Wine Club #1 Did I tell you about Wine Club? It's much like Fight Club, but instead of fighting there is wine and tasty meat and cheese snacks.
Wine Club #1 went well. We met at Jeff & Claire's charming chateau over looking Thompkins Square Park for an afternoon of Rieslings I think the final count was 11 people and we ended up tasting (and for the most part finishing) 9 bottles of wine. Aiyeee!
So, we did it Wall Street Wine Columnist style and brown bagged every bottle, numbered them, and then I walked around taking notes. It was slightly dorky, but fun. The upset of the evening belonged to Eric whose Turning Leaf California $8 Riesling tied for 2nd place with Tamara's underdog entry (the name I seemed to of misplaced). The Turning Leaf came in a short, normal wine bottle unlike the others which all had those lovely swooping, long necked bottles - but it got enough votes to place second. It was the friendly.
Tamara's American Riesling started badly. She showed up a little bit after we had started, and we immediately opened the bottle and tasted it, which was a bad thing. The first two glasses poured were tasted and then dumped in the sink. But, 15 minutes or so later, it had warmed up a tad and aired out or whatever and it began to shine. It was lovely and complex and stuff was happening in your mouth.
Number one was a tie between the 2002 qualitatswein from Evan & Joanna and Mrs. Robot's 9$ 2000 vin d'alsace which I described initially as "freaky". Why "freaky"? I think there was a dry/sweet issue, and it was a lot of one of them.
What lost? Well, the ones that did badly were the ones I had thought might do well just based on the bottle. Jeff & Claire had a lovely bottle (literally) from Weingut Johannishof - but it failed in the tastings. My 16$ Molitor Markus and John's similarly priced Koehler-Ruprecht didn't do very well, either.
What did we learn? Not much. I still don't completely understand Rieslings and the German language issue of trying to read (or * gasp * pronounce) the names of the wines is tough. I am not sure I would have a need for a Riesling ever again, but it was great fun to taste them all and I think everyone would agree that they have a better grasp of what makes these wines tick. Which is the whole point I suppose.
