摘一段送給喜歡德國葡萄酒的同學們。
One night returning home to my hotel, I turned off
the car and got out, and heard something I hadn’t heard
in many years. Three nightingales were singing their
dark and eerily beautiful song. Suddenly the world went
silent, and it was the beginning of time. I walked in the
hotel’s garden and listened to the three tiny birds until it
was too cold to stay out longer. Inside, I opened my windows
— they were still singing there in the middle of the
night — and snuggled under the comforter, and let them
sing me to sleep.
And now I’m writing about making the case for
German wines. As if they need me to do so; nature makes
the case for German wines constantly, with every lark,
thrush or nightingale, every snap and crunch of apple,
every swooningly fragrant linden tree in full blossom,
everything that makes us pause when we are visited by
the electric hum of the world. German wine is a small
bird that sings in the darkness, a seemingly minute
thing that can tingle your pores, and haunt you your
entire life.
....
“The wines are impossible to understand.” The
world is impossible to understand, using that logic. Look,
German Riesling is absolutely simple in its essence. Lateripening
variety with naturally high acidity grown in the
most northerly latitude possible. Long hang-time. Lots of
opportunity to leach minerals from the geologically complex
sub-soils. Roots have to sink to find water, and roots
are able to sink because topsoils are poor. Topsoils are
poor because most riesling is planted on mountainsides,
to increase its chance to ripen, and rich soil would avalanche
every time it rained. So the wines are fresh,
vibrant and minerally. There. Now you know everything
you need to know to “understand” German wine. The
rest is fine-tuning. There’s some stuff to memorize, like
there is everywhere else. If you care, you learn it.
.... (羅小姐說:if you got this far, you can google for the rest....)