I can't think of any wine that I'm more nervous about describing than Reisling.
That is, I guess where I can talk chardonnay and sauv blanc all day long I don't really feel that I own this grape. Once I leave the safety net of six or eight big names like Loosen, Prum and Donnhoff, I get lost in the woods pretty fast. Not speaking the language is definitely an impediment--many of the names just don't stick. Add to this that these two wines were purchased without any foreknowledge I can at this point remember accumulating in advance, and for virtually nothing price wise, and I'm in deep danger of liking wines that David Bueker and the rest of the informal reisling coalition hereabouts consider white trash. (Joke--it's a white grape, get it?)
Nonetheless, I'm going to be brave. Be kind. The "night" wine:
1999 Weingut Kunstler Rheingau Hoehleimer Holle Kabinett Trocken
The last of six bottles fished out of a sale bin for like $5 each about six or seven years ago. I needed white wine for cooking, and figured these would do. Perhaps it was something I learned about the wine after purchae, I really don't remember, but something caused me to spare them that ignoble fate and move them into the regular cellar in spite of the fact that I found the first bottle pleasant but a bit wan. Another bottle a year or so later showed improvement, but then I promptly forgot about them. So here we are in 2008 with unintentionally-cellared dry kabinetts, which sounds to me like grand folly, and no space in the cellar any more for dogs, so I pulled one of these to serve with, if by any chance it was still alive, a soup and salad dinner wherein the soup was a light braise of green beans, buccatini and bacon. It didn't bark. In fact, it was quite impressive. Now a deep straw gold in color, it has somber but richly un-kabinett flavors that are not sweet but which typically reside on the perimeter of sweetness: ginger, coconut, lemongrass and roasted pumpkin without the spice. The finish was long and satisfying, and it was a fine match for the soup.
2000 Grans-Fassian Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Riesling Auslese
Another producer I was unfamiliar with before picking up a singleton (though many more were available) on Winebid for $10. This is the day wine because Piesporter has always tasted like liquid sunshine to me. That is, they never seem shy, and are usually more heavily weighted toward the sweet citruses like orange and tangerine and occasionally tropical stone fruit like loquat and mango. This was like that. Youthful yellow color. On the palate, intense, exuberant fruit that's sweet and showy on the entry and seductively teasing on the finish. Well paired with an Asian-themed dinner of fried shrimp with a sweet and peppery dipping sauce followed by a spicy crab ramen with fresh basil and white truffle oil. I could kill myself for buying only the one bottle.
