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in alcohol and range from dry to semidry—I especially like those from the Mosel region. Spätlese grapes are picked later; the wines have more body and richness and are often slightly sweeter. Finally, the even riper, richer Auslesen can also be drunk with your more robust starters or even your main course. Sweetness varies in these two categories, generally in inverse relation to the alcoholic strength listed on the label. A Spätlese with 8 percent alcohol will have more residual sugar than one of 11 percent. But don’t worry too much about it. Explore.

One of the reasons wine professionals love Riesling is that no grape (other than Pinot Noir) seems to have a greater ability to communicate the differences between individual vineyard sites. (The French call this terroir.) Riesling is the carrier not just of its own grapey DNA but the signature of the soil, subsoil, and even bedrock in which it was raised. Germany’s major wine regions present huge variations in geology, providing endless sources of study and tasting debate among well-lubricated professionals. But anyone with taste buds can easily detect, in various combinations, such fruit flavors as lemon, lime, green apple, grapefruit, apricot, and even pineapple in the glass—the latter flavors more likely in the later-harvest Spätlese and Auslese. But what makes German (as well as Austrian and Alsatian) Riesling profound, like great Chablis, are the permutations of minerality. All have a vibrating, zingy acidity that focuses the other flavors in the wine as well as in your food.

Kabinetts are excellent aperitifs. Spätlesen and Auslesen go well with a tremendous variety of food: most Asian food, white fish, pork, chicken, and almost anything in a cream-based sauce or cooked with fruit. (The Germans even drink them with beef.)

Nowhere except in Burgundy is the name on the bottle so important. The simplest way to be safe is to look at the back of the bottle for the names of importers Terry Thiese and Rudi Wiest. On the West Coast, Old Vine Imports represents some great growers. Some of my favorites include Christoffel, Schlossgut Diel, Donhoff, Gunderloch, Dr. Loosen, Fritz Haag, Lingenfelder, Müller-Catoir, Selbach-Oster, J. J. Prüm, von Simmern, von Shleinitz, and Robert Weil. Or just ask your sommelier. He’ll perk up, as you will when you take that first electric-shock sip.

NO MORE SWEET TALK, OR HOW TO

IMPRESS YOUR SOMMELIER, PART TWO

Austrian Riesling

One of the distinguishing characteristics that set wine professionals apart from the drinking public is a fondness for the Rieslings of Alsace, Germany, and Austria. At tribal gatherings the pros frequently bemoan the resistance of the punters to anything that comes in a tall, thin bottle. “Whenever I notice someone ordering Riesling, I find that I end up talking to him,” says John Slover, a sommelier at Cru, chef Shea Gallante’s foodie and wine-geek mecca in Greenwich Village. When I dined there with British wine critic Jancis Robinson, I challenged her to pick a heroic white from a wine list that looks longer and thicker than my last novel; she eventually opted for an F. X. Pichler Riesling from Austria’s Wachau district. For the past few years, Austrian Rieslings have been the hottest insider’s secret in the wine game.

In the preceding chapter I declaimed the glories of German Riesling, but I have found that even those who remain resistant, and sugarphobic, almost always warm to the unique charms of the Austrian juice. Austrian Riesling is generally much drier and more full-bodied than its German counterpart, reflecting warmer weather, while slightly more racy and minerally than the Alsatian stuff. Another way to put it: Austrian Rieslings have great bone structure, but they also have flesh on their bones. The best examples have the precision and mystery of an early Charles Simic poem. Purity and precision are two words that recur in tasting notes. Think of a samurai sword. Then imagine it simultaneously slicing a lime and a peach. Anyway, I did the other day when I tasted a ′99 Hirtzberger.

One prominent