Notes on a couple of good wines tasted recently

1. Weingut Joh. Haart 2001 Kabinett Riesling: Eleven years old and still fresh and fruity! In fact, the fruit was so concentrated that the wine tasted sweeter than it was. Excellent balance; enough zip to impress with food. A rare warm year on the slatey slopes of the Rhein and Mosel. A very enjoyable wine. There are many sad things about this life, and one of them is that so many wine drinkers cannot enjoy a quality Riesling. Riesling is  one of the five or six greatest wine grapes on the planet.

2. Gruet Demi-sec sparkling wine: Wow! I knew Gruet's sparkling wines, and have sold a lot of them, but mostly the Brut Rose and the Blanc de Blancs. This is not as sweet as you'd think; the European descriptors regarding residual sugar (RS) in sparkling wines are not understood by us Americans. For example, this wine comes off as dry with perhaps the least hint of RS--my spouse won't drink sweet wines and she loved this one. Yet the makers call it slightly sweet. It's not that, but it is great. I want more! A sprinkle of dosage really helps bring balance to the acids and it helps the fruit notes shine.

Gruet's owner grew up in Champagne country, and found near-ideal growing conditions in high-elevation New Mexico. Don't laugh! This is high-score, well-respected bubbly! I think it's 100% Chardonnay but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some Pinot Noir in there, too; certainly the Chardonnay flavor profile is not overbearing in the wine.