We just left Miami-Wynwood where I took the above picture and a slew of other eye-popping images of street art. For me this one was particularly interesting, because it had multiple meanings, not least the fact that yesterday we left Key West, a place that considers itself some sort of paradise. Of course, the fact that Key West is the #RieslingRoadTrip paradise lost doesn’t cut any ice with Miami native, even amongst people like the crowd at last night’s Riesling & Co. dinner at The Cypress Room. This is an astonishing different restaurant from the Miami norm, and the crowd 
were clearly all fans of what I’m calling Alternative Miami, but some people might even consider Anti-Miami. They were in the best of moods and had the best of thirsts. Even before we sat down the Riesling Brut sparkler from von Bühl in the Pfalz – “like Champagne, but really dry” was a frequent positive comment – had persuaded a bunch of guests to let Paul Grieco tattoo them with some elegant and startling results, as my photos show.
The crowd the enthusiastically emptied one Riesling (the Gelback feinherb from Schloss Johannisberg in the Rheingau!) after another (delicate Mosel Kabinetts from C.H. Berres and Selbach-Oster, then a very exciting Spätlese from Maximin Grünhaus in the Ruwer Valley). Then the powerful, but subtle 2004 Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) served with spit-roasted pheasant and morels blew many minds: “that’s really a German red wine?” So the Co. part of the evening’s theme not only functioned well, but seemed to hit a string of bulls eyes. The evening was also special for me, because we held a twitter competition and David Sprintis won a copy of my new book, BEST WHITE WINE ON EARTH – The Riesling Story (#BWWOE). That made him my very first real reader, because so far only members of the team at Abrams (under who’s Stewart, Tabori & Chang imprint the book appears) have read it. We will be holding a competition like that at every event during our expedition. Just tweet with our hashtag #RieslingRoadTrip and you stand a way bigger chance of winning a copy of my book than a New York Lottery ticket give you of winning that pile of millions! The prize is something that even all that money can’t buy you, because the book is unavailable until close to June 17th; the official publication date. Riesling Contraband!
I’m not someone who can do all this strange Riesling stuff and travel all these distances on the Riesling Road without doing some serious thinking about what it all means. It strikes me that although I’m not on sailing the high seas on a huge ship and I don’t have a harpoon in my hand, just my notebook, camera and a wine glass, but I am a bit like Captain Ahab in Hermann Melville’s novel ‘Moby Dick’. The difference is that Captain Ahab had to search for his whale, his nemesis and we’re dragging mine behind me all the time, all the way to NYC on May 16th. I’m referring to the retro-fitted 20 foot shipping container that is our mobile tasting room. The first time I saw it standing at the side of the road in Venice Beach/LA last July it reminded me of a beached whale and that’s how it looked to me again on Monday when I met up with it again on a Key West backstreet. Sometimes, like last night’s aperitif hour under a freeway overpass on the wrong side of the tracks in Miami, it seems to swallow me whole, but so far it always spat me out in one piece. As Nietzsche said, “anything which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger!” and Miami didn’t kill me in spite of a couple of slightly dangerous moments. The locals call them Miami Moments, but NOW our small convoy, the whale and I are approaching West Palm Beach. I’m coming back, because I was here in February. The images below are by Wynwood based artist Peter Tunney, for whom Miami is a City of Dreams. For me it’s West Palm Beach!
