Why Riesling is the most misunderstood grape – and how to drink it well
Riesling may be a mature 591 years old this year but it must have the insecurity complexes of a teenager. Despite doing all it can to show its diversity over centuries, many consumers still equate it with the sweet, cheap punchline that is Blue Nun. This reputation hasn’t come from nowhere, the late 20th Century saw the export market flooded with mass produced sweet Riesling that masked the grape’s true character.
For those in the wine know, Riesling is one of the true greats. Yes, it can caress you with honeyed sweetness, but it can also be bone dry, mineral and austere, zesty and playful or vibrantly bold. The white grape variety has electrifying acidity, bountiful aromas, crystalline precision and offers layers of flavour.
What makes Riesling especially versatile is its high natural acidity which gives it balance, meaning even the sweet wines have a finely honed backbone to them. The dessert wines are often late-harvested or even allowed to rot (also known as noble rot) on the vine. Water escapes, concentrating the juice and sugars to create a luscious and heady drink. The lighter, floral off-dry versions have long been recommended as balancing pairings with heat and spice driven dishes such as Thai and Indian cuisine.
Libby Brodie on why Riesling is overlooked
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It is the dry styles that I would draw your attention to however. These are some of the very best of wines for food pairing, for slow sipping on long summer evenings or as a cool, crisp pick-me-up aperitif. Riesling is the bottle to pull from the fridge when you are serving up grilled scallops in their shells, or pulling a roast joint of pork from the oven. It is a wine to sip whether dipping the salmon sashimi into soy sauce or cutting slices of creamy goats’ cheese and brie. And unlike so many other wines, most often this grape’s enduring structure can age exceptionally well in all its guises and reveal new pleasures year upon year.
Germany is this grape’s true spiritual home. Mosel, with its steep sloping vineyards and cool weather, creates poised, linear wines. Rheingau and Pfalz are also notable areas and create especially elegant wines. They also tend to be lower in alcohol, in keeping with modern preferences. Look for the word ‘Trocken’ on the label, which indicates a dry wine. Other words such as Spätlese, Auslese and Trockenbeerenauslese mean ‘Late-Harvest’ (sweet), ‘Selected Harvest’ (sweet and often slightly richer) and ‘Noble-Rot’ (the sweetest and most luscious of the lot).
Look to other excellent countries too, the rounded perfume of wines from France’s Alsace, the lime-scented zestiness of Australia’s Clare and Eden Valley and the cool precision of America’s icy Fingers Lakes and Washington State.
Riesling is celebrating its birthday on 13 March. To earmark the occasion it’s high time you grabbed a bottle and joined the party!
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