2018 Dandelion Vineyards Enchanted Garden of Eden Riesling

Flashes of yellow, gold, and green. Subtle hues yet hints of brilliance. A panoply of citrus combined with polished steel leads an aromatic charge directly to your olfactory bulb. Who needs smelling salts when you can raise such a glass of riesling. Behind the heightened aromaticity hides some plaintive notes of fruits tropical and exotic. Texture and weight - or its effortless weightlessness - is the first impression. Mineral water ‘non-gas’, mineral salts, talcum, and an attenuated austerity. Yet from the mid-palate comes a roundness and richness of riesling fruit, in a tiny cluster of quantum power. Sharp and righteous acidity arrives at the back palate to sweep all before and away, as if a tide taken at the height.

This white wine’s purity and acidity and citrus personality waits for elaborate and yet simple, honorific fish dishes. Nori roll with salmon, sashimi, the world’s simplest and freshest rice paper roll; an oyster just before the Vernal Equinox; a prawn boiled for one minute in sea water… Or alone in a glass with a view of the Sea.