Wine: Riesling Eiswein 2012
Winemaker: Weingut Kochan
Vintage: 2012
Variety: 100% Riesling
Price: £25.99 **

Quite the dessert wine. Intense, elegant, perfectly balanced and packing a memorable punch! Ideal with vanilla and white chocolate cheesecake or a host of soft rich cheeses.

A sweet and powerful bouquet of baked apples, pears, white stone fruit, almonds and a beautiful honeyed aroma. The palate is intensely sweet, but not sickly or overwhelming: tinned peaches and poached pears dominate, with a nice lemony kick rounding things off. The acidity is pronounced and it needs to be to keep the flavours in check and pacify the sweetness.

Full bodied, weighty, rich and unctuous, golden yellow in colour, intense and with a lengthy finish. All round a fantastic wine, perfectly balanced, possessing great finesse and character. One to savour.

Buy now from Virgin Wines

** (37.5c bottle)

Wine: Alsace Riesling
Winemaker: Trimbach
Vintage: 2009
Varietal: 100% Riesling
Price: £17.99

This was my first Alsace Riesling and one that really blew me away! I couldn't have wished for a better introduction into a future world that I'm sure going to over indulge in.

The bouquet is vibrant, energetic, and particularly expressive and captivating. Oodles of sharp tropical notes of grapefruit and baked pineapple, with some lovely, elegant floral notes. The palate is diverse and proud, brimming with character and complexity: loads of citrus notes, unripe green fruit and moving onto some bready almost starchy flavours toward the finish, which adds depth of flavour as well as something unusual in a usually very lean, overly acidic varietal.

Crisp, bone dry and full of zingy acidity, medium bodied, subtle silky tannins (very appealing to me, to find this to be the case in a white wine), a moderate intensity and fabulous farewell of finish.

Partner this with Chinese or spicy Thai cuisine and you'll be thanking me into the next week.