What Are You Drinking?

“The wine business is full of snobby rules and ridiculous sayings. One of these is that you should drink the wines of the region in which you live. ... One should drink wines of regions completely opposite to the one in which one lives. Who would want to drink German Riesling on a cold and wintry night in Berlin? I’d take a hearty California Cabernet or Chateauneuf-du-Pape any day. By the same token, what I really love to drink in California in the summer are wines of northerly climates, whose freshness and acidity enliven the palate and prepare it for our fresh produce. Or late-harvest wines such as this beauty, which could only come from a very cool region, the 1998 Weingut Brundlmayer Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese Kamptal.”