Saturday night, we went over to our good friends’ house for dinner.  We have had countless dinners at each others house (mostly theirs) and opened hundreds of bottles of wines together.  We have organized wine dinners, focusing on increasingly obscure facets of wine.  We both have considerable cellars and love to explore various wine/food pairing options.  He is a fantastic cook and we are always treated to a fantastic meal.  As I do just about every time we go to their place for dinner, around noon, I text to determine what kind of wine I should bring.  The reply:

white.

That is it: “white”.  As I mentioned, it would be impossible to recount the vast array of different wine themes we have had over the years, but they have included themes such as ‘late 1990’s CA meritage’ and ‘unoaked chardonnay not from France or CA”.  Now we are going to do ‘white’.  Um, OK.  This sounds only slightly better than a wine ‘theme’ that my mother might suggest (she would likely say ‘sweet’ or ‘with an ice cube’).  So for the first time in a long time, I have absolutely no frickin’ idea what to do when it comes to wine.  Do I bring two chardonnays?  Two rieslings?  A riesling and a chard?  Oy vay.  I text again for some clarification, but got little.  We do decide that we were going to taste them blind while playing a wine tasting game that we had played a few times (Winerd).  So I think this is going to be easy.  If I can’t tell the difference between four different whites blind (two of which I know), you might as well put me in the ground and sell my cellar to an Outback Steakhouse.  I go down to the cave (‘cave’ is the French word for ‘cellar’–I have neither, actually; I have a basement with wine all over the freaking place, but being the OCD ‘Wine Guy’ that I am, I know exactly where every last bottle is) and grab a Patz & Hall (CA) Durrell chard and a great grand cru riesling I brought back from Alsace a few years ago from a tiny producer (the Domaine de l’Oriel in Niedermorschwihr).  I had not tasted the wine in a while, so I want to see how the wine is doing.  I chill them, throw them into bags (to keep their identities hidden), and herd the family into the car to head out to the suburbs.

We arrive and after a quick bottle of champagne to celebrate another day above ground and out of jail, I open the Patz & Hall to give it a quick taste to make sure it is not corked (it isn’t). I had planned on doing the same for the riesling, but before I get the chance, dinner is ready and we move to the dining room where we start eating fabulous food and tasting the ‘mystery’ wines.  I am first given a wine that I’m sure, based on the nose, is my riesling.  I confidently (pompously) announce I know what the wine is, blah, blah, blah (sometimes I wonder why they remain friends with us as I can be such a complete self-absorbed jackass–actually I do not wonder: it’s because of my wife).  Then I taste it.  I am crushed–not because I ‘guess’ it is the wrong wine (I don’t), but because the wine is not quite as good as I had hoped (and I have another four bottles of it at home, ugh).  It is still very good, but no where near where it had been last year when I tried it.  At this point in the game, however, I need only declare whether the wine is a new world  or old world wine. I state (not ‘guess’) ‘old world’ and the game moves to the next player/wine.

Well, it comes around to me a second time and I receive a second mystery wine. I know instantly that it is the rich, buttery, and slightly oaky Patz.  Right now I am convinced the ‘white’ theme is a dumb effing idea–this is way too easy for a ‘Wine Guy’ (but we are all still having a lot of fun—that’s one of the great things about wine).  So I identify this one as a chardonnay and we move on again.  It comes around to me a third time and I am given another unidentified wine.  I take a whiff: gewurztraminer.  No doubt.  I take another whiff.  Wow, what a nose: ‘a floral, litchi, kiwi masterpiece’ is what I wrote later.  I know this nose, but can not place it.  So I take a taste.  Another Wow.  A sweetness that is rich and unctuous but perfectly balanced by the acidity and followed by a incredibly long (60 second?) finish.  I know this wine….

Ohshitohshitohshit.

I just now realize that I did not bring the l’Oriel Riesling–I had grabbed the l’Oriel Gewurztraminer instead.

So all my grandiose proclamations about the first wine were completely wrong.  It turns out that the first wine I tasted is not even a stinking riesling.  And it is not even from France.  Ugh.  It turns out to be a Grüner freaking Veltliner (!) from [gasp] Italy (?!?).  Triple Wow.

So much for being the ‘Wine Guy‘.  What a dope.