Riesling

This elegant white wine, a collaboration of Chateau Ste. Michelle and Germany's Dr. Loosen winery, shows the enormous potential of Washington state riesling. It's a powerful wine -- mostly dry but with enough residual sugar to ward off severity -- with a great deal of the elegance found in a top-notch Rhine. It displays a complex blend of pear, mineral, cherry, sweet pea and citrus flavors and finishes with a hint of spritz. Serve with roast turkey and spicy Asian dishes.

With personal wine guru Mary Zajac at my side, I peer through a glass of Cave Spring Riesling 2004, sniff, swirl and sip. She asks what I am tasting. "Honey?" I venture. "A little fizz?" Zajac nods. I rejoice. Our palates agree! My wine tutorial is off to a promising start. Semi-dry wines "can taste very sweet up front," explains Zajac, a Baltimore food writer who worked at the Wine Source in Hampden for 3 1/2 years and has completed the first level of training to be a sommelier. Then, "like biting into an apple," a Riesling's flavor can move along the tongue from sweet to tart, she says.

2004 Trefethen Dry Riesling, Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley ($18). This magnificently structured riesling is consistently one of North America's best white-wine values. The vineyard is a splendid anomaly - like a patch of supercharged Alsace in a sea of Napa cabernet. Where most American producers smother the character of riesling in excess sugar, Trefethen lets its stony, complex mineral character shine through. There's plenty of flavor - pears, citrus fruit and even a hint of cherry - but none of the fruit-salad anarchy that can turn riesling into a cartoon.

In wine, as well as in life, the exceptions are a lot more interesting than the rules. One of the most reliable rules about wine is that if it's white and dry, it won't age well. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time that's good, solid information for anyone interested in starting a wine collection. Then you run into a wine that turns the rule on its head, swings you around in the air and makes you love it. Such a wine, in my case, was the 1991 Zind-Humbrecht Rangen de Thann "Clos St. Urbain" Riesling from Alsace.