“I recently took part in a covert Riesling trocken (dry) tasting the auspices of which; time, place, and tasting colleagues will remain enigmatically undisclosed…The tasting was organized in a double blind fashion, so that even the organizer, who was gracious enough to share 16 or so of his wines, did not know the order in which they appeared.  All the wines were bone dry Rieslings, most of which were of German origin (more on that later).  It was not expected by the host but I brought along a wine of my own (a Bottega selection of course) that we threw into the first flight of wines but then later revisited allowing the wine to breathe a bit.

Each flight was three wines and I tried to take diligent notes as the small group of five discussed thoughts on each wines style, origin, vintage and producer.  It was hard to tell just what each wine could be.  Our host was an enthusiastic guru of German wines with a particular passion for trockens, but he is also from Stuttgart so many of the wines had the possibility of being direct from the winery, never seen outside the towns from which they hale.  This made things very interesting.  At the end of the first flight we tasted the wine I brought, it was confusing to all, so we decided to revisit is again later.  Things progressed and wine styles changed, each seemed so unique ranging from stinky petrol aromas with flinty tannins to wines that seems like classic white burgundy, round and soft with minerals and oil that hinted at Puligny-Montrachet, weird!  We would unveil the wines after each flight of three.  The biggest surprise came on the second flight. We had tasted two wines back to back; each had different colors, aromas and texture.  My notes included statements like: “light hay color, light and floury, very delicate with an older style, maybe a ’99?” for the first wine, followed by: “tropical, minerals, big viscosity, smoky, Burgundian, Nahe style elegance, but maybe a Muller?”.  Before uncovering the wines the host made his comments and said that he thinks he put two wines of the same producer but of different vintages into the flight.  He opened the bags and we all got a shock, not only were the wines from the same producer, they were the same wines!! Both 2005 Muller-Catoir, Haardter Burgergarten “Breumel in den Mauern” GG from the Pfalz.  This goes to show that no matter how well you may know a wine there is so much individual bottle variation especially from great artisanal producers.  As the night progressed things got serious with big appearances from legendary producers: Kunstler, Schafer-Frohlich, Beurer, Rebholz, Kuhn, and JB Becker.  The tasting was complete, but we went back to the black box that I had brought as well as a couple other late entries. After tasting again, everyone was confounded at the wine.  I gave a hint that it was not necessarily from Germany, which threw the group into frenzy, everything from Washington State to New Zealand was being thrown out there.  I smiled; they didn’t know me very well.  I opened the bag; of course it was a dry Riesling from northern Italy! Bruno Verdi, 2006 from the Oltrepo` Pavese.  Capping off the night we enjoyed some delicious treats made by our German host; a veal and leek terrine, giant “ravioli” for lack of a better German term, filled with bitter greens and finely minced veal and herbs in broth, then tripe stewed in a meat sock with rosemary and tomatoes , so awesome, especially as we sipped through the amazing wines again.

This was a truly unique, sublime, and at times surreal tasting, which is what I think it should have been given the nature of trocken Riesling and all the guises it can present itself in.
A dopo,
Matteo