Here is something worth doing this weekend, and it costs almost nothing in effort. Open three Rieslings side by side and taste a single grape live three different lives.

You have met two of them already: the off-dry Washington wine from a couple of weeks back, peach and lime with a kiss of sweetness, and this week’s bone-dry Finger Lakes, all lime and wet stone and racing acid. Add a sweet one, an icewine or a late-harvest, and the whole spectrum is in front of you. Pour a small measure of each, left to right, dry to sweet, and taste them in turn. The same grape, and yet three completely different wines. You can feel the place and the choice in every glass.

It is the kind of thing that is quietly astonishing, and far better with company. One person notices the Finger Lakes makes their mouth water hardest. Someone else likes the soft edge on the Washington. Nobody has to be right. The point is to taste them together and say what you notice out loud.

Wine was never a solitary thing. It is an ingredient in an evening, and the evening is better shared.

Savour the good stuff.