On a Saturday morning during the 2013 Wine Blogger’s Conference in Santa Barbara, California, I vowed to go light on the next round of tastings.  I had had a lot of wine to taste (by normal tasting standards, it was only 11:30 am) and I wanted to enjoy lunch and have some easy-going conversations with people I had been ignoring due to the focus on wine.   Then I happened upon a Tercero wine table, and I was smitten.

Crisp, refreshing and what I think are a new twist on old takes (Syrahs, Roses, White Grenaches, oh my!) I couldn’t get these wines out of my head several months later before I joined the Tercero Wine Club.

My memory served me well, especially with regard to The Outlier 2013 Gewurztraminer. I hadn’t kept this wine in a refrigerator, but it is Minnesota, so it was opened and served slightly chilled.

The body and taste is voluptuous but restrained, as if viewing a curvy woman in a tightly woven bodice; revealing and refrained and showing a few mysteries one drink at a time.

A just-opened bottle, the wine offers aromas of stone fruit–some would say peach or more like lychee to me, as if some herbaceous hints lay beneath the surface.  With another turn of the glass and served with panko-and-parmesan breaded walleye, this wine’s lemon and green grape notes and medium plus acid complemented dinner in a beautifully balanced way.   The taste lingered, but not the tartness that usually turns me off of cheaper whites.

At $25 a bottle, I would stock up on a few bottles of this wine that goes just as well with winter fare as it will summer delights.  If Malcolm Gladwell is correct, and outliers are defined by 10,000 or so hours of practice, I have to believe a lot of practice went into making this wine a perfect dining (and drinking) companion.