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should eventually taste a great Eiswein (ice wine) like his 1998 from the Graacher Himmelreich vineyard, the frozen grapes of which were picked the morning of November 26. The grapes are pressed while still frozen and yield precious little juice—but that juice is incredibly concentrated. Freezing concentrates not only the sugar but also the acid and the extract, and the resulting wine is nectar worthy of the Wagnerian gods.
    The affable, puckish Raimund has a slew of relatives in the area who are also making Riesling under various, somewhat confusing Prüm-inflected labels, including the great Joh. Jos. Prüm and Dr. F. Weins-Prüm. (They take their doctorates seriously in Germany, and every other winemaker seems to use the title.) Another great Mosel producer is Dr. Ernst Loosen,
Decanter
magazine’s 2005 Man of the Year. His Wehlener Sonnenuhrs (he, too, has vines in that vineyard) are brilliant, long-lived wines, but he also bottles another under the name Doctor L. that’s made from several vineyards, a good value, and a great, not too serious, summertime quaff. Loosen also produces a very fine Riesling in Washington State in collaboration with Chateau Ste. Michelle called Eroica. Simplified labeling is, of course, no guarantee of quality. It was Blue Nun, after all, that created the stereotype of German whites as the vinous equivalent of Dunkin’ Donuts. The most important element on these labels is the maker’s name, and in order to experience the transcendent pleasures of these wines, youneed to memorize a few. Lingenfelder’s Bird label and Selbach’s (of Selbach-Oster) Fish label are two entry-level Rieslings from serious makers, and both offer good value at about twelve bucks.
    At a slightly more ambitious level are Dragonstone, from Leitz; Erben Riesling, from Joh. Jos. Christoffel; and Jean-Baptiste, from Gunderloch. Robert Weil’s top Rieslings from the Rheingau are among the most sought after and expensive in Germany, but he bottles a
Kabinett
and a wine called simply Riesling that should be approached with caution, lest you find yourself developing a serious habit. It’s a little like reading
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
. Next thing you know, you’re neck deep in
Ulysses
or, God forbid,
Finnegans Wake
, which is, come to think of it, the literary equivalent of
Trockenbeerenauslese
—the highest rung of the German qualitative ranking system, the richest and rarest wines produced from voluptuously ripe grapes afflicted with noble rot. And yes, they’re sweet. If that scares you, stick with the
Kabinetts
. No Ph.D. required.

Finally Fashionable:

Rosé from Provence to Long Island
    Dining on Shelter Island one recent summer evening, I noticed that many of the wine buckets in the room were filled with bottles of rosé. Sunset Beach is the Hamptons’ answer to the beachside restaurants of the Côte d’Azur, and perhaps not so coincidentally more than a few of the tables were occupied by French speakers. Rosé has long been the summer beverage of choice for fashionable diners in Cannes and St. Tropez, but Americans have yet to fully embrace it. Even in the towns on Long Island’s South Fork, known collectively as the Hamptons, which serve as summer headquarters for some of America’s best-traveled and most trend-conscious consumers, rosé is just starting to get its due. But there are encouraging indications that it’s becoming fashionable, and Long Island is beginning to distinguish itself as a source of excellent dry rosé.
    Among the unmistakable signs of a rising tide of rosé consciousness is the fact that the hotelier André Balazs, the proprietor of Sunset Beach as well as the Mercer hotel in Manhattan and the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, has lent his name to a rosé that is available in his hotels from South Beach to L.A. “I spent summers in St. Tropez growing up, and I associate rosé with long summer lunches on the beach. When we started Sunset Beach fifteen years ago, it