Lessons With Wine Exploration

Always eager to try a different style of wine, I was excited when friends brought me straight from Germany a bottle of Schreieck Faszination Scheurebe Trocken 2014. The wine was a treat, but more, it made me think of all the lessons to be learned while exploring the background of just one bottle:

• Fun with Languages - There were a minuscule twelve-thousand search returns for "weingut schreieck", and almost none in English. Site translation proved helpful to an extent, and reasoning on a variety of unfamiliar German words and phrases proved challenging, but intriguing. The Faszination line appears to describe wines that are as elegant and "delightful as you are". Also the description might read "good for happy hours", and "especially at night".
• Underlying and Unexpected Flavors - I felt this particular bottle was dominated by a thick layer of grapefruit. This is apparently common with wines from the Scheurebe grape, a mysterious offshoot of Riesling. The winery promotes gooseberry and rhubarb notes. My tongue is not keen enough to recognize such specific flavors, but they made sense after I read the literature. Interestingly, a search finds everything from Pinterest boards to toiletry product lines of "grapefruit and gooseberry". Who knew?
• (More) Level Playing Field - Almost hidden in the description is the wine's Silberne, or Silver Kammerpreismunze, a German state's Chamber of Agriculture-awarded medal for wine quality. It appears Germany attempts to reward quality in the glass, rather than location, tradition, etc. It would be interesting to see how an overarching, state-run, wine ratings system would be received in America.

These are only a few of the interesting references available on the web about a somewhat obscure wine. Much like wine choices, information about wine has never been more available. And, I had as much fun reading up on the wine as drinking it. What do you like to learn while wine-ing around?