It's not often that we get wine board-related folks out here in Sacramento, so it was a treat to meet up with David Bueker's wife, Laura. She was out here on business, so Martha and I picked her up at her hotel and headed off to Lemon Grass for some southeast Asian cuisine, some tasty riesling, and some great conversation.
Our contribution was an '89 Bert Simon Serig Wurzburg Auslese. This was a taut wine with plenty of mineral character overlaid by some aged riesling fruit. It was a complex and interesting wine, and a pretty intense one as well.
Laura brought a 2005 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Spatlese. This was a very tasty wine, with lots of fruit character. It gave more of an impression of sweetness than the other wine, but there was still plenty of acidity to counter-balance it. Although I'm no expert on riesling, this one seemed to have everything you'd want in a young wine. Lovely stuff.
Both wines went fairly well with what we ate. But as an aside, I thought the food was good but nothing to write home about. I expected a little better from this restaurant, particularly given that my "Shaking Beef" initially seemed to be shivering from the cold. I had to send it back to get it properly warmed.
The highlight of the meal was a bowl of wonderful ginger ice cream that we all split. The ginger flavor was prominent but not overly sharp or hot and it went beautifully with the Selbach-Oster. Certainly the first really good wine-and-ice cream combination I've ever had. (I knew riesling went well with food but I had no idea you could take it THAT far!)
All in all, a very nice evening and further proof that it's always worthwhile to get together with people from the WLDG. (And their spouses!)
Mike