All About Riesling Wine
All About Riesling Wine
Continuing our series of posts about grape varieties, here's a bitesize introduction to one of our all-time favourites, Riesling.
What:
White grape that originated in Germany and has gone from a bit of a persona non grata to a sine qua non - arguably up there with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc in the white grape Champions League.
Where:
It's done pretty well to put itself about the place since its birth in the Rhine, and can be found both close to home, notably in Germany, Austria and Alsace, as well as further afield in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
How:
Very seldom blended is old Riesling (and when it is, beware!), while style can range from drier than an Amish wedding to the botrytised and honeyed eisweins of Germany and Canada.
Tastes Like:
Bottled sunlight, on a good day, with intense minerality that can proffer anything from petrol to rubber to lanolin in older wines, with ginger, honey, citrus blossom, tropical fruit and often a pleasingly oily texture, Whether dry or sweet it tends to have a lip-smacking acidity. We love it.
AKA:
Rheinriesling, Johannisberger.
From Our Wines
Our German-focussed list offers something for everyone. Start with Peter Lauer's vibrant and chiselled sparkling Riesling while you ponder dinner; move onto Sybille Kuntz's beautifully precise and energetic Kabinett Trocken for which we recommend a Japanese-inflectd salmon carpaccio.
Then it'll be Schafer-Frolich's Vulkangestein, which while still dry has more texture and richness and has us dreaming of Vietnamese fish sauce chicken wings.
If you want to blow the doors off with something Sichuan-adjacent it's worth leaning towards sweeter Rieslings such as Fritz Haag's Spätlese, or the magnum of Kabinett by the same producer.
These don't have to be drunk with pudding, with the residual sugar both complementing and taking the edge off the heat. That's not to say they wouldn't work well with a good citrussy dessert.
You may have run out of steam by this point. Save the magnum of Peter Lauer's racy, mineral, smoky Faß 16 for tomorrow and make a choucroute. Yum.
Do Say:
Wow, who thought wine that smells like petrol could be a good thing?
Don’t Say:
Riesling's too sweet for me.