On the Riesling Trail: Day 11 – Rendezvous with Destiny

Riesling Rendezvous has just ended and as you can see from the photo above of the winemaker partners in the Washington State Riesling project ‘Eroica’ and guiding spirits of the event Ernst Loosen of Dr. Loosen in Bernkastel/Mosel (left) and Bob Bertheau of Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville/Washington State a lot of fun was had. There was also a lot of serious tasting and discussion. In particular, this morning’s overview tasting of medium-dry to sweet Rieslings  brought many surprises even the wines from well-known producers like Helmut Dönnhoff of the eponymous wine estate in Oberhausen/Nahe. In his case it was the 2003 Riesling Spätlese from the Hermannshöhle site which wowed us by being incredibly graceful and fresh for one of the hottest vintages on record. The medium-dry 2012 Abtsberg ‘Superior’ from Dr. Carl von Schubert’s Maximin Grünhaus estate in the Ruwer was a super-elegant and hyper subtle wine in style most people didn’t realized he even produced. Once again Andrew Headley of Framingham in Marlborough/New Zealand showed a Spätlese type wine, the 2012 “F”, which was up there with the best Mosel wines of this style. Then there was the stunning first vintage of ‘Eroica Gold’ (the 2012) from the pair of winemakers pictured  above, the first spot-on Auslese style Riesling I’ve tasted from Washington State. How a sweet wine from a semi-desert climate taste so delicate? For me meeting dozens of Riesling producers I’ve been exchanging my thoughts and impressions with for years or even decades was also a great experience. Thank you Ted Baseler, the President of Chateau Set. Michelle for taking Riesling so seriously, and for making that wine and this great event possible!

It was a good thing that I was swept along by all of this, because since I arrived here I ran into couple of problems including an allergic reaction (in my case the main symptom is abdominal cramps) that made it difficult to deal with the other issues. It makes me think that life is a lot like winemaking. There’s a standard theory as to how you should do it, and although some winemakers fiercely deride that theory there’s much to be said for it. But then there are moments when you definitely need to throw all the theory overboard and do exactly the things you normally wouldn’t. I’m an inherently cautious person who’s first instinct is to steer away from the storm, but suddenly I ended up in the middle of a horrible storm…