Wine geeks have certain weaknesses. One of my favorite ones is the inability to pass by a wine shop that has a certain interesting look about it, and no matter how busy I am, I must enter and peruse the shelves. I'm always looking for the surprise find, the good wine that has been lost or hidden on the shelf for years, waiting for the consumer who would recognize its value and bring it on home.
I had an appointment to meet some friends for lunch one afternoon. We were going out for Thai food, or some variation of it. I needed to pick up a bottle or two to go with lunch and my time was short. I was on my way back from the doggy exercise excursion, and I knew I would pass an older liquor and wine shop I'd been in before. It clearly had been owned at one point by someone who knew wine. There were bottles there that had not sold in years, but were clearly of good quality and now had some bottle age on them. For our Thai luncheon I was on the lookout for German Rieslings. Allow me to fill you in on some knowledge about these wines that will give insight to the rest of the story.
There are two important classifications pertaining to Rieslings that anyone who drinks these wines should know. First is the QbA classification or Qualitatswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete. QbAs are wines of good, but ordinary, quality that come from any one of Germany's thirteen official winegrowing regions. They are generally off dry, with moderate acidity and fit the profile most people think of as "Riesling."
Above this are the QmP wines or Qualitatswien mit Pradikat or wine with higher attributes. I actually like to think of it as wine with a pedigree. These wines explain on their label where they are from, which vineyard they come from, and how sweet they are based on how late the grapes were harvested.
For my purposes I was looking for two wines. I wanted one to be a dry, but complex Riesling and the other a sweet Riesling with good complexity also. If I could find wines that had some bottle age on them also it would be a bonus. As my luck would turn out I found both. Looking over the shelves in (let's call it Fred's Wine Emporium) I found an Alsatian Riesling from Albert Mann that would fit my dry wine need. Tucked away on a lower shelf was a German wine from the Rheinfalz region from a producer I knew. Kurt Darting makes very good wines, and I am very fond of his sweeter QmPs. I saw a 2003 Auslese from Durkheimer Nonnengarten which seemed to be a real find. I purchased both of them crossing my fingers that they would be good when I opened them.
When I got to the restaurant I opened both bottles right away. I needed to find out if I had purchased gems or duds. My nose and my eyes were both really pleased. The two wines side by side looked like this:
The Darting Riesling was on the left in this photo. It's deep golden color comes from it age. The perfume coming from the glass suggested honey, lychee, petrol, and ripe stone fruits like apricot. The Albert Mann Riesling was also deep but the flavors were drier and had much more mineral content.
I paired these wines with a dish from Laos. A ground meat and salad dish called Larbe was wonderfully spicy and complex with vegetables, herbs and duck.
The pairing was fantastic. The fact that I'd found two older wines that really delivered was a double bonus. The experience really affirmed my belief that if you want to find goodies or truffles, you have to dig. What "truffles" will you find on the shelves of Joe Canal's on your next visit?
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