Wine Tasting Reports

After a frenzied weekend of offlines and booth-surfing at the Boston Wine Expo, it was a treat to relax with an excellent dinner at my friends' Thor and Theresa's home on Sunday evening. Wine Lovers' Discussion Group participant Robert Jones dropped by, Theresa outdid herself in the kitchen with Flammenkuchen (Alsace pizza!), butter-poached lobster and Nantucket Bay scallops, ragu Bolognese lasagna with homemade spinach pasta, a pear and arugula salad, cheeses and a simple dessert of blueberries and strawberries in custard.

We didn't go crazy in the wine department, but opened an eclectic selection that generally showed very well with the food. I didn't take detailed notes; these brief reports are given from memory the following morning.

Bernard Schwach Domaine du Moulin de Dusenbach 1995 Riesling Schoenenbourg Alsace Grand Cru - Full, crisp and surprisingly fresh for a seven-year-old wine, it's dry and aromatic, textbook Alsace Riesling.

Pierre Sparr 1993 Gewurztraminer Mambourg Alsace Grand Cru - Another wine with a few years but bearing them well, it offers classic Gewurz fruit, emphasis on the grapefruit; it makes such an excellent pairing with the bacon-and-onion Flammenkuchen that I really focus more on the food match than the wine.

Gravner 1997 Collio Ribolla - I brought this one along for sharing after having "hand-imported" it from the winery last year, and was hoping it would impress me as much as it had when the wine maker was pouring. No problem! It was as I remembered: Bright gold and almost as opaque as orange juice, Gravner shunning all filtration and anything else that would clarify the wine at the expense of flavor intensity. Not particularly aromatic in its white-fruit flavors but blasts open on the palate, a white wine that's trying its best to be red. It's excellent with the sweet seafood and butter flavors, and perhaps surprsingly, works better with the lasagna than ...

Ridge 1994 Jimsomare Ranch Santa Cruz Mountains Zinfandel - Perhaps showing its age, it's an absolute delight to smell - it could be used in a Le Nez de Vin vial to illustrate "Draper Perfume" - but it seems to be shedding its structure on the palate, smooth but oddly soft.

Husch 1998 Anderson Valley Late Harvest Gewurztraminer - Served with dessert and fine, I'm sure, sweet and snappy if not overladen with Gewurz character, but at this point, between the joy of sniffing the Jimsomare and sipping the last drops of the Gravner, I didn't give it much attention.

• Dinner at Angelo's in Stoneham
• Wine Expo tasting notes
• Dinner at King Fung Garden
• Dinner at Thor and Theresa's

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