Summer of Riesling Worship

So I feel terrible for taking so long to post about the Summer of Riesling crawl hosted by Terroir, but the truth is I've been drunk on the elegant and dynamic white wine with the essence of citrus or stone fruit and sometimes petrol to compose myself long enough to do it justice.

Back in July, I heard about a funky little endeavor put on by the genius of Paul Grieco at Terroir wine bar in the East Village and David of Grapes and Grains. All summer, the only white wine he would serve would be Riesling, and he was challenging his minions to a month long crawl across two boroughs to taste and evaluate 13 different Rieslings. When I first started drinking wine, I would only drink Riesling because I thought it was always sweet. Boy was I wrong. I committed to completing the challenge and dragged a couple of friends into the wine abyss with me. We tasted wines from sweet to dry, aromatic always but with varying degrees of fruit, floral and even gasoline flavors. We were also brought to the coolest venues, from Bar Veloce in the East Village (where I discovered their amazing Nutella Panino for only $6 - get it!) to Huckleberry Bar in Williamsburg with the friendliest bartenders. I also loved getting to go to Bar Bouloud and sitting in front of the charcuterie bar, doing a flight tasting at Blue Ribbon Downing Street Bar, and sampling Riesling on tap at Blue Ribbon Brooklyn.

My friend Christine and I posing with our "Summer of Riesling" passports at Bar Veloce

Other than the obvious reason of partaking in a journey to drink wine throughout the summer, up for grabs was a Riesling tasting dinner for six people at Terroir's sister restaurant Hearth. After the crawl was up and the passports were turned in, I discovered that I was one of about twelve or thirteen people who actually completed the challenge. Our next task was to answer two of the most absurd questions I have ever been asked, but I knew that I had to be creative in answering them. 

Relying on the physics I learned in college and the drawing skills I practiced in grade school, my creative juices flowed (with Riesling of course) I came up with something I was pretty proud of and was sure that I had it in the bag. See my questions and answers here: Yael's Q&A.

Then I found out there was a girl who wrote her answers entirely in verse. Of course she did. She triumphed and I was sad.

But just reinforcing how much I love the creative genius that is Paul Grieco and Terroir, I was not only invited to a private tasting of Bernkasteler Doktor Rieslings (including one from 1959 - awesome!!!) with the winemaker herself, but I also was awarded half a case of different Rieslings as an honorable mention prize. 

My loot of juice

Can't say I'm still sad after all of this. Definitely not. Can't wait for next summer so that I can do it all over again! Until then, who's coming over for Riesling?