The 2008 Langhe Bianco Petracine (Riesling) is simply gorgeous in this vintage. Rich and expansive, the wine blossoms on the palate with an intricate array of honeyed fruit. Ideally the wine needs a few years in bottle for some of the more tertiary notes to develop, but this is a lovely bottle. Vajra’s Riesling is made from vines in Barolo and Sinio cropped to tiny yields that give just one bottle per plant, yields that would be considered small even for important red wines. This is a high-class effort. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2018. Vajra is one of Piedmont’s best kept secrets. Here readers will enter a world of sublime hand-crafted, artisan wines of the very highest level. Aldo and Milena Vajra’s passion comes through in spades in these terrific new releases, which I can’t recommend highly enough. Importer: Martin Scott Wines, Little Neck, NY; tel. (516) 327-0808