Framingham winemaker, Dr Andrew Hedley, produces this country’s top sweet wines. His botrytised wines are, of course, vintage dependant and 2011 appears to have produced ideal conditions for the controlled development of that (sometimes) beneficial vineyard mould. In 2011 Hedley made a a string of fantastic dessert wines from Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer and, the star, Riesling.

Hedley has borrowed French label nomenclature for his F-Series Vendange Tardive 2011 Pinot Gris  and F-Series Selection de Grains Nobles 2011 Gewürztraminer.  For his F-Series Rieslings he uses German labelling terms to identify the various sweetness (and quality) levels. They include a great Kabinett (93 points), brilliant Auslese (94 points)  and mind-blowing Beerenauslese that I awarded 95 points and would quite happily have gone higher except I had to leave space for the Trochenbeerenauslese which earned 97 points which is, for me, the highest I can go because I add a further two points to my scores when featuring the wines in Gourmet Traveller Wine to allow for their slightly different scale.

Why not give it a maximum of 98 points (and therefore 100 points in Gourmet Traveller Wine)?  To give a wine 100 points it has to be perfect. Only Buddha is perfect. It would be disrespectful to compare a wine to Buddha. Or would it?