Not so long ago, I attended an unforgettable tasting of rare old German wines: unforgettable both for the wines themselves and for—rarity of rarities—the absence of commercial overtones about the occasion, although the man who put it on is a wine merchant.
This was a follow-up to an earlier tasting, four or five years ago, of a similar group of irreplaceable German wines, which their owner wanted to share with a number of friends. The wines in question were Beerenauslesen, Trockenbeerenauslesen, Spatlesen, and the comparatively simple Auslesen. These terms, in German winemaking, refer to wines made from grapes at specific degrees of over-ripeness; they are hand-picked by the bunch, or even by the single grape. The wines are fabulously expensive, made to be enjoyed by themselves rather than as accompaniments to food. Owing to the northern climates in which the vines grow, in the steep Moselle and Rhine regions of Germany, the best of the wines are made in very small quantities and limited vintages—and once drunk, they are gone forever.
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