Apátsági “Pannonhalmi” 2006 Rajnai Rizling (Hungary) – There’s an easy, almost effortless, quality to riesling from certain places that leads one to believe that even when it’s not great, it’s at least decent. It’s important to remember, however, that a fair bit of that is due to curation from importers and the like, and truly worldwide door-to-door explorations won’t always lead to similar success.

Here’s a wine that I want to like, but really don’t, and the primary reason distills to boredom. This is recognizable as something within the riesling family, but it trumpets neither fundamental rieslingness nor a powerful sense of place (identified not by its specifics – I lack experience with the site whence these grapes come – but by the muddled and generally uninteresting way in which this wine expresses itself). Neither here nor there, writ aqueous. (1/12)