Peninsula Cellars Late Harvest Riesling, 2014

Maker: Peninsula Cellars, Traverse City, Michigan, USA

Place of origin: Old Mission Peninsula AVA, Traverse City, Michigan, USA

Style: Unintentionally sparkling late harvest Riesling

ABV: 8.5%

Price: $14 (website)

Appearance: Light gold with a huge fizzy head and big ongoing effervescence.

Nose: Cut ripe pear, mineral water, apple juice.

Palate: Very fizzy with stone fruit notes and some oregano on the back end.

Finish: Sweet and apple-y with a pebble of minerality.

Parting words: Everybody makes mistakes, even winemakers as skilled as those at Peninsula Cellars. A few months ago Peninsula Cellars released only a few cases of their 2014 late harvest Riesling to the public. A couple pallets of that wine were released to Michigan by the Bottle Tasting Rooms and offered to wine club members like yours truly. I love Peninsula Cellars and I love Riesling, so I jumped at the chance and bought two bottles. Shortly after picking them up, I received an email that the wine had effectively been recalled. The wine in one of the pallets had undergone an expected and undesired secondary fermentation in the bottle, turning it into a sparkling wine. This created a lot of pressure in the standard Riesling bottles the wine was in and some of the corks had started popping out, rather forcefully in some cases. Anyone who bought it was asked to return the wine to the store for a store credit or drink immediately. I returned one of my bottles but took my life into my hands by keeping the other one in my cellar. It leaked a bit, but never exploded. The leaking began to get worse last week so I brought it up into the fridge at that time.

This wine is delicious but disappointing to me in a couple ways. First, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to taste the 2014 Peninsula Cellars LHR as the winemakers intended. Second, I’m disappointed that Peninsula isn’t regularly making a sparkling Late Harvest Riesling because this is so good. Sadly, these sparkling bottles are probably all gone by now but if you happen to find one, I highly recommend you purchase it.