A moment with a 1990

It has been storming all day, gloomy and rumbly. It is April 20th and outside here in Maryland the trees are just leafing, that raw and unbelievable green that is like no other - none. The leaves are still curled and modest, and from my 18th-floor balcony the trees look like a lace-curtain of emerald. It is coming up on dusk, and we have a break in the storms, and a moment of sunlight, crepuscular rays against the black of a storm that's passed us as it blows to the north. Sun against a black sky, sun on the new leaves, the whole sky is a drama, a tragedy, a miracle that played for a few seconds that the hero didn't see.

I didn't plan it, but the wine in my glass is an obdurately youthful 1990 Riesling from my friends at Nikolaihof: the Weingebirge Smaragd, all of 12.5% alc, and so pale and limpid I almost couldn't accept the ripe balsamic sweetness of the fragrance. I won't tell you how it tastes, because I don't know; at least I can't say how the taste assumes the form of a "tasting note." I just know that when I stood on my balcony and looked at the sun-on-black of the departing storm, at the sun-on-emerald of that instant when its rays struck those wet new leaves, dark, light, green, all at once, I knew there was no other wine that could liquefy this moment of the world.

Wines like these don't seek to be included in the world, or even in YOUR world, because they already are. They didn't ask your permission, any more than the rain does or the leaves do. When you drink them, they include you.
This is so unusual, this feeling of being invited and included, when so much of our experience is confined to being indulged or entertained.

Is there really enough time to waste on the unreal? But who am I to know what is real and what is false? Nobody. I have no authority. I only report what I experience. You are free to ignore me. But, I know what I know, and there is no doubt in it. And I know that every time we accept the flashy in place of the true, we starve a being who lives inside us. A modest being, who won't even say when he is hungry, but late in your life you will see he is there, and there's no time left to know him, and he had so much to say to you.

By Terry Theise