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Even if you don’t like sweet wines, you owe it to yourself to try a taste of 10 or 20-year old Spatlese or Auslese (particularly since these wines somehow taste less sweet over time). You may be surprised at how fresh the flavors are, and how well it goes with food. While at a nice restaurant in the Russian River Valley recently, an oenephile friend of mine splurged on a bottle of 1964 Auslese from Karthauserhof, one of the great producers of German riesling. He was skeptical that it would go well with the multi-course dinner, but because he loved Karthauserhof and 1964 was his birth year, he decided to give the wine a go. What followed was one of those supernatural experiences where the scales fell from his eyes, opening him to a wide new world of pairing aged German riesling with foods of all shapes and sizes. Auslese, especially when well aged, is not to be restricted to spicy dishes or the dessert course. Buy one and forget about it for a couple of decades, and you’ll see what I mean. 2005 is hailed by many as the greatest year for age-worthy German riesling in recent memory (since 1971, some say). As such, I picked up a bottle of 2005 Eitelsbacher Karthauserhof Spatlese for my case. I’m tempted to buy an Auslese also, given how well it ages. At the end of this process, we’ll see if I have the wallet (or if not, the gumption) to do so.
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