Vitis vinifera cultivar. Drawn in the Napa Valley in the fall of 1974. Most California Rieslings are evanescent at the very best. A few months of fragile charm and they slip into Victorian declines fit for the heroines of costume novels. Appealing scents of berry descend first to cardamom, then to fernlike, and finally to outright petrolish. Ultraripe, the fragile young are reminiscent of apricot, but these too follow the rest of the evolution to petrollike fumes. Either way, textures slip from lilting to plodding. But the exceptions! The exceptions make not only the price of fresh, cold, cracked Dungeness crab worth paying, they make lake crawdads worth the hunt, turn steamed clams into royal feasts, and save the price of Champagne to go with the strawberries and cream. —Bob Thompson, Notes on a California Cellarbook
$150.00 each.