As I am prone to do from time to time, I decided to throw a couple of ringers from my private cellar into the fray and ask our captive audience to guess what vintage, region of Germany and producer they might be. In honor of Klaus-Peter's inaugural U.S.visit, I decided to base my selections on his birth year, 1973. The first wine was a 1973 Scharzhofberger TBA Eiswein from the 1982 Trier Auction which we had chanced upon a few days before when he came by for lunch. We were looking at random bottles in the collection and when I pulled this one out he exclaimed with glee at how magnificent it was the one time he'd tasted it. I had never had it and I must say that it is a monumental wine with all the greatest aspects of both TBA and Eiswein but probably more typical of TBA in its sheer concentration and density.  Deep amber and gold color with a touch of green on the rim; always a sign of great old Riesling. Tremendously incisive Saar acidity together with a voluptuousness and layered complexity only to be found in the very greatest landmark late harvest Rieslings of all time! God, was it good! At lunch the previous Sunday, I'd decided to play a little number inversion game with KP's birth year and subsequently served a wine from 1937. This time it was 1937 Erbacher Marcobrunn TBA, Staatsweingut from the infamous Ludwig Balz Collection. WOW! This wine was beyond phenomenal. It was a liquid tribute, a monument to all the great TBA's produced over centuries in Germanyand living proof of the greatness and longevity of the Riesling varietal. Needless to say, Klaus-Peter will not soon forget his American debut...and neither will we!

Cheers,

Dade