Is it a truck, is it a whale? No, it’s the Riesling Road Trip mobile tasting room. I begin with a picture of the largest of the vehicles with which I’m traveling Coast to Coast, LA to New York Wine City (NYWC) to aid identification. Yes, this is our truck, our whale. I call it a whale, not only because of its bulk, but also because if you look at whales close up then they have barnacles and other stuff clinging to them making them look a bit like our grungy truck. Anyway, if you see the above then you are having a Close Encounter of the Third Kind with Riesling Road Trip. If we’ve stopped then step inside where it is much less grungy and there are a bunch of dangerously refreshing German Rieslings.
Yesterday was our first day and we began in eccentric style by doing our first tasting art the curbside directly outside Spago Beverley Hills. The reason for this restaurant location is that Spago’s somm Chris Miller (pictured below) is on the Riesling Road Trip with means the team as far as tomorrow night when we reach X. I’m not supposed to tell you where X is until we reach it, which will cramp my writing style at times, since it will often deny me one of the five Ws of journalism (where?). However, first we need to even reach that distant point X. Spago we made without much trouble and the team found that the tasting room was easier to open up and fire up than expected. Almost immediately our first guests arrived there was a buzz inside with wines like the dry 2011 St Remigiusberg Riesling from Tesch in the Nahe and the 2007 Blanc de Noir Sekt from Raumland in Rheinhessen respectively proving the Germany can make elegant dry whites and refined sparkling wines. Really? Wow? I had no idea!
Yesterday evening we drove from our hotel in Hollywood through Thai Town to the Covell Wine Bar where a mixture of party atmosphere and serious curiosity greeted us. Dark and cool, this wine bar with around 180 (!) wines by the glass was a dramatic contrast to the airy and self-consciously sophisticated Spago. Chris looked completely different without of his Spago suit and seemed as at home as I felt in our tasting room. Some old LA friends of mine mingled with people from the wine scene completely new to me. One thing they had in common was the disadvantage of not being able to taste the wines of a slew of young German producers who have come up in recent years, but don’t yet have a US importer. There was some discussion about how importers here still want to focus on the sweet Rieslings, since this is what the majority of consumers expect from Germany. It strikes me that this is just another example of the widespread need to pigeonhole all manner of things. Every time we stop, open up and fire up our tasting room we will be trying to help expand minds in a gentle and (almost entirely) legal manner. America still has a lot to discover about the diversity of Germany’s Rieslings and other wines.
It was past midnight by the time we were finished and by the time we reached our hotel I was feeling the Longest Day in LA in my bones. However, this was just the beginning and will probably soon like it was a piece of cake. Now I have to wrap this up and throw my last things in the suitcase ready to leave this city of angels and strange creatures. If you see us knock on wood for us. We’ll need all the luck we can get the next days.
drinking riesling and enjoying your writings about the RRT. When will you be in Pennsylvania? Would love to see your tasting room on wheels.