Back in 2000-2001 I tasted a '99 Pinot Noir from Müller-Catoir of which Hans-Günter Schwarz was seriously proud. And the three encounters I had with the wine from cask were compelling, so much so that by the third visit with that wine, I was ready to call it the best German red I had tasted to date. I think I offered it in 2002; it may have been earlier. It seemed to herald a new realm of possibility for GERMAN Pinot Noir, not something imitating Burgundy, but something expressing ITSELF without reference to its benchmark.

So I praised it to the skies. And it was bottled. And after it was bottled, it didn't taste very good.

OK, I thought; bottle-sickness. It'll come around. And yet it didn't, and each new time I tasted it, it still didn't. Man, I had some serious words to eat. The wine was stiff and fruitless. I spent too much time tasting white wine; what was I doing trying to be an authority on some weird-ass German Pinot Noir?

But in the greater scheme of things, it was just one little lonesome wine. It would disappear. And even though I had some awkward conversations with customers who couldn't find the manifold virtues I'd claimed to have discerned in this beverage, I hoped my rep would survive.

I bought four bottles for the private stash. The first two weren't fun at all. I decided to keep the last two a few years. If the poor thing never came around, I'd marinate some stewing beef in it.

Last year the wine was peeking out. It was still a small version of the euphoric thing I tasted from cask, but it was wine again at least.

Tonight, January 2009, the final bottle is open. And now I wish I HAD MORE. It is starting to soar. Fucker took its time! It's a really serious Pinot Noir, with a German firmness of spine and a certain rectitude about the fruit, but with texture and vinosity and length.

I'm not saying this because I'm relieved to be vindicated. If I affected indifference to being wrong I have for the sake of simple decency to be equally indifferent to being right after all. No, what I'm really after is to demand the right to clamor. Not exactly to clamor for answers, but instead to clamor for the questions to be heard. We know the wine is always better from cask; we allowed for that. WHY did this wine vanish after bottling? WHERE did it go? IS there a way to have picked the lock to unearth its flavor? WHAT might it have been? Should I have been less impatient?

Finally, how much do people actually understand about what a guessing game this is? To be sure, the longer you taste and the more you accumulate, the more educated your guesses are. But will readers (or buyers) meet you there? Or must you feign omniscience in order to be credible at all?

I have Schwarz's cell phone number, and if it wasn't the middle of the night in Germany I'd call him and remonstrate like hell. "You might have warned me your 99 Pinot would disappear into a shell," I'd complain.

"Well kid, I might just have done that," he'd probably reply, "If I myself had known. So instead let me welcome you again into the worrisome uncertain world. It's awkward as hell, but you tend to meet very honest people here."