Each year brings new releases and new scores, and each year dozens of new wineries make their debuts too.

Wine as liquid confection. The wines from Phase I are often pink or white in color and slightly-to-moderately sweet in style.

What struck me was that the hillside vineyards (steep hills!) are an extraordinary amount of work to maintain. These hillside sites make the best wines, but no matter the price of the wine, it clearly is an economically risky proposition.

“Riesling and its beautifully balanced linear wines have always been associated with the cool climates of Germany.”