Salil joined Laura and me for a long lunch (6 hours - we are trying to live up to Noel's standard) this afternoon & early evening. We had some lovely wines with our lunch, but one wine, which we shared after lunch, stole the show of the day, and likely the year:
1998 Joh. Jos. Christoffel Erben Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Eiswein
This is probably the greatest sweet wine I have ever tasted in my life. Iced peach and strawberry with spicy, honeyed overtones give some description of the flavors, but do almost nothing to convey the experience of a wine that could be doled out with an eye dropper yet still provide more mouth filling flavor and persistence than in a magnum of a normal wine. Each miniscule mouthful was an explosion of flavor with blazing acidity that was perfectly buffered by the equally intense sweetness. There's really very little way to adequately describe the experience, except to say wow. Bravo to Hans Leo Christoffel for shepherding a masterpiece into being.