Trocken Rhymes With Dokken

What is weirdest to me is the extraordinary level of serendipity that has occurred in my life with regards to my professional life.  It feels like all roads have led to this place, this moment.  I worked at a trucking company about 30 years ago (Holy Peter Paul and Mary I feel old!) – I joke with my bosses, who else can claim they were a loadmaster on their resumé (and commence jokes here).

The biggest reason for me being such a wine nerd is that I was a music nerd much much earlier in my life, and – hear me out – the similarities are well at least for me, overwhelming.  Ever since I was 10, 11 years old, when a neighborhood friend turned me onto KISS and Queen, I have wanted to be a rock star.  My father played jazz trumpet, my grandfather, country and bluegrass guitar and banjo, and apparently, my great-grandfather was something of a folk music troubadour (shades of Woody Guthrie), so it seemed only natural I follow suit.  I spent years fumbling with the trumpet, then the drums, before some girl I was crazy about told me I had a great voice.  Well, maybe the great part was an exaggeration, but after flirting with the rock ‘n’ roll for a decade, and wound up in restaurants, and then retail, all the while infatuated with wine.  Winemakers became my rock stars, the virtuosos in the vineyards, like many friends I have met over the years.  Both wine and music have always been a rock for me in my life, and both have had the remarkable knack for evoking vivid memories of some of the best and some of the weirdest moments of my life, a kind of time machine that takes me back to simpler days, those milk-and-honey moments that make us smile in warm remembrances.

The long and winding road from opening for Kansas (the band) to travelling with Master Sommelier Fred Dame, and future wine movie stars D’Lynn Proctor and Ian Cauble (from the movies Somm and Somm: Into The Bottle), it has been one heckuva ride.

Fast forward to recently, when I tried a couple of new wines from Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium, a renowned producer in the Mosel region Germany that has been in existence since 1561.  A bit more modern in packaging, the Fritz Willi line offers up three different styles of Riesling:

Fritz Willi Riesling Feinherb 2015.  So Feinherb is a term of which most of you are unfamiliar (or maybe not).  It is as close to the term halbtrocken (half-dry) as you can get, but still just ever-so-slightly sweeter than that.  Its clean, crisp acidity is complemented by its hints of Cling peaches, yellow apricots and notes of guava and lime zest.  Pretty delicious.

Fritz Willi Riesling Trocken 2015.  Trocken=Dry.  This is briny, minerally and laser-focused with green apple, melon and hints of chayote, rhubarb and daikon.  Crushed stones and a touch of sea salt emerge with the slightest note of Key lime.

Fritz Willi Riesling Frizzante NV.  Slightly fizzy, non-vintage Riesling with a light apple mousse, notes of lemon zest and kumquat with a touch of white spice and floral underpinnings.

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