Joh. Jos. Christoffel Erben, Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Auslese 1*, Mosel

Watching the NFC Championship game with Walter (Packers vs 49'ers). Walter brings a nice assortment of sushi and this delicious Auslese to accompany it. Straw yellow in color. Citrus peels on the nose. Honey, apricot and Meyer lemon cream in the mouth along with a surprising (to me) nuance of strawberries. Acidity to balance with a very nice finish.

Dinner at l'Artusi 6/28/2011 (l'Artusi) : Golden straw. Big, louche nose, forest floor, a little wet cardboard; lots of classic spice; clearly quite mature. Palate better, pretty sweet, spicy, orange zest. Good. Decent length, surprisingly. B tonight, but there was probably a + on there a couple of years ago.

Such vivid, bright red fruited flavours - all cherry and strawberry with a little splash of lime, touches of spice and floral elements and a really intense slatey mineral base beneath that makes it feel almost crystalline. Pretty much everything I could expect from this wine and then some, with a sense of amazing purity to the flavours here, lots of depth and the acidity keeping it really precise and light.

Nice. A more complete wine than the spatlese, but very clearly made of the same stuff. It's only very slightly richer, but apparently by enough to make the difference between lean in a bad way (diluted) and lean in a good way (light and nimble) -- an old-school auslese, much closer to table wine than dessert wine. The cherry component to the fruit that emerged in the spatlese only after a few days is here in full force from the …