The only disadvantage to having a wine cellar is that bottles can get put away for so long that you forget where you got the wine. A couple of weeks ago, I bought up a bottle of Geyser Peak Gewürztraminer, a California wine. If I hadn't read the label, I would have sworn it was from Germany; it had the distinctive taste of a German wine, what I call a straw aftertaste.
The next time I was at the wine store, I asked for more but they said that Geyser Peak got out of the Gewürztraminer business and was now making upscale wines. They recommended a couple of other brands, but neither has that German taste.
What is it about German wines that makes them taste that way? I would suppose that the California vintners use the same grapes. Is there a distinctively German yeast that imparts the flavor? My wife thought that the other vintners might be purposely toning down the German-ness of their Gewürztraminer as it might not be that appealing to the wider market.
Paul