A staggering 180-degree hairpin bend by the playful Mosel River at Bremm. Visible at the lower right-hand side of the picture is the small town of Bremm; visible on the left-hand side of the picture is the jagged wall of vines that is the Bremmer Calmont vineyard.

I liked the wines of the Scholium Project the first time I had them. While the landscape of California (as translated through grape and wine) is so often a full-throttle world of nearly overwhelming power, the wines of Abe Schoener's Scholium Project combine a tactile (and yes, ripe) intensity with a mysterious complexity that gives the wines a most unique, and most singular, profile.

A Jeroboam of 2004 Scholium Project Babylon is poured.

I also liked Abe Schoener the first time I met him; there is an honest rigor to the way he works and thinks - which is, I suppose, to be expected as Abe is a former professor of Greek Philosophy. In fact, I believe the wines of the Scholium Project really do embody the notion of "winemaking as thinking." I wrote an essay all about this idea - a meandering and philosophical treatise that undeniably flirts with the ridiculous, as well as hopefully with a touch or two of the sublime.

In any event, it was with great pleasure to host Abe and some press, friends and fans of the Scholium Project (collectors of the Scholium Project wines are a passionate group of people) for a great dinner at the Stanton Social, in New York City's lower east side.

The lineup involved a number of new releases as well as a bevy of back-vintage goodies brought from California by the man himself, Abe Schoener...

How happy were we to see a bottle of Hansjorg Rebholz's mind-blowing Riesling in a photo in Wednesday's New York Times! - not to mention the short but savvy article wine writer Eric Asimov penned about the great quality (and drinkability) of dry German Rieslings!

To see real-time inventory of our great German dry Rieslings, click here.

Von Buhl, Emrich-Schonleber, Weil and Kunstler stand proud and dry.

We've been passionately championing dry German Rieslings since the store opened over three years ago and it's gratifying to see the press, not to mention a growing audience of wine drinkers, get behind these great (and absurdly affordable) bottles. At this point, with a selection of nearly 30 dry German Rieslings from $16.95 and up, we must have one of the widest, deepest and surely the greatest selection of dry German Rieslings in the U.S.

Right now, we have amazing dry Rieslings from Donnhoff, Emrich-Schonleber, Furst, Karthauserhof, Knebel, Kunstler, Lang, Rebholz, Schafer-Frohlich, Spreitzer, Stein, Von Buhl, Weil, Wirsching and Wittmann! (And about 200 other German Rieslings of the sweeter variety.)

I love Austrian wine labels - they so often have this strange, playful modernist thing that I find really kooky and charming. Like the Bauhaus meets Playskool. Coming way out of left field then, is the label for FX Pichler's Riesling "Unendlich" - a super-rare bottling the Master puts together in great years. For those of you who know FX's pretty staid dark green labels, nothing prepares you for the Unendlich...

The following is an essay I handed out at a dinner I hosted in New York City for Abe Schoener and his Scholium Project wines in the spring of 2008. - Stephen Bitterolf

"Scholium: From the Greek , which shares the same root as "school, scholarship." Signifies a modest project, not a preeminent one, undertaken for the sake of learning, understanding - hence a commentary, an essay, a study." www.scholiumwines.com

"Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it." Jasper Johns, Notebooks, 1963-4

You just never know what to expect from the Scholium Project.

The 2006 vintage produced (among many other things) two very different Sauvignon Blancs from the Farina Vineyard atop Sonoma Mountain - twisted sisters if ever there were. One, a ruthless ice queen, pulsing out lightning bolts of minerals and acidity, the other a ponderous eccentric (a Prince in His Caves as it were), dressed in plush fabrics, as mysterious as the other is lashing.

The Kunstler estate has recently moved into new headquarters. Well, old new headquarters. The great building on the Geheimrat-Hummel-Platz that Kunstler now calls home formerly housed the Rheingau's oldest sparkling wine manufacturer. True story. The 1837 building is considered a landmark and has some wonderful architectural details. Though the new tasting rooms that Gunter Kunstler and family have redone are undeniably slick with some modern touches (they have automatic sliding glass doors - "komisch!"), they've done a great job of keeping the soul of the building front and center - it's truly beautiful and a wonderful place to taste wine. Believe me, 11am on a Tuesday rarely looks as good for me as a lineup of 19 different Kunstler wines, going back some 10+ years.

You have arrived. Hochheim's Geheimrat Hummel-Platz. It's fun to say!