A Love Song for Old Rieslings
It doesn't look like a white wine as it oozes into the glass. Instead of a bare tint of yellow, the 30-year-old liquid has become saturated with a hue of light caramel. Instead of apple, pine, and almost-harsh mineral aromas, you smell wax and lanolin and cream. The difference is so profound that wine lovers use different terms for the scents: "aroma" as the wine comes onto the world's stage, "bouquet" as it meditates from its middle age.
Melissa and I fell in love with old Rieslings as we toured the Mosel. Wine makers would pluck dusty bottles from the cellars, eager to play the "Guess the Vintage" game. We always guessed too young, surprised when the wine maker grinned and told us about vintages in the early 1980's or late 1970's. Most wines don't age well, but good Rieslings are an exception. They remain aquiver with the acidity that keeps them intact and they are generous with the complex flavors that evolve as the wine matures.
We got another taste recently when our friend Tim Patterson invited us to share a few old samples from his cellar. He had received them from his doctor—"Because my friends don't drink Riesling," he told Tim, echoing a common experience among Riesling lovers. The wines were older than our Mosel samples. Older than Melissa, too, but younger than I. The star of this little sample was the 1971 J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese Riesling, a convergence of thoughtful producer and sun-kissed site that still has floral and fruit character even as the deeper notes have begun to emerge. The higher sugar level in the wine helps preserve it.*
We always taste these old Rieslings with a sigh. They offer a glimpse at another universe of wine, not just a beverage to accompany dinner but something mysterious that provokes silent contemplation among the tasters. These wines are a benevolent Ghost of Christmas Future showing you the gifts waiting decades from now in your storage facility. You see why wine lovers bury bottles in their cellars like pirates hiding loot. Can one wait 30 years to drink a wine that has been tucked away? It seems so far from now, but each infrequent sip of an old wine reminds you of your goal, even as it urges you to seek out other old bottles in the meanderings through life.
* In theory, kabinett, spätlese, and auslese merely tell you how much sugar was in the grape at harvest, not how much sugar is in the wine. In practice, unless you also see trocken or halbtrocken or feinherb on the bottle, the terms often map to increasing levels of residual sugar in German wines.
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