There is NOOOO doubt whatsoever, not a shred: my favorite white wine grape in the world is Riesling. Furthermore, my favorite white wine in the world is dry Riesling, preferably from Germany. Dry Riesling! Dry Riesling!
And thereby hangs an American tragedy…
For we Yanks…going back to our experience with the cheap German imports that flooded our market post-World-War-II…have typically sneered at the concept of Riesling.
“Riesling?” they’d say, if you proposed a glass. “Ya mean like Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun? YUCK!”
And the Yanks were responding, properly, to the insipid, mass-market lightly sweet wines that the Germans were sending us in bulk in order to boost their post-war economy.
The timing was awful; the Germans were staking this sugary claim just as Americans were starting to get serious about wine, in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. We got serious about Chardonnay, above all…about Sauvignon Blanc…even about the wines made in Soave, Italy…but we steadfastly did not get serious about Riesling!
Little did we all realize that in the preceding century, the nineteenth…dry German wines were riding high across the world. You can check the catalogue of the great London wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd from the 1890s…dry Rheingau from Germany was selling at a higher price than France’s Corton-Charlemagne, or Montrachet…the two most expensive Chardonnays in the world! The vineyards of Germany had a supreme reputation…though the Germans never chose to promote great single vineyards as much as the French did.
The other mistake the Germans made was having a poor 20th century in general. We often speak of the various nightmares of the two wars…but, a few rungs down the ladder of concerns, the century for the Germans was a marketing nightmare as well. And the post-war resuscitation of Germany’s reputation as a place of fineness, of cultural achievement (the land of Brahms, Goethe, Schiller, Kant)…was not helped one iota by the marketing of cheap sweet wine.
Then the world changed, though most American wine-drinkers still don’t know it. The Germans…let’s say the 1980s was the key period…started getting real serious again about making outstanding dry wine from Riesling. The key word on labels was “trocken,” which means dry; if you saw, and if you see, “trocken” on a label, it means the wine inside the bottle is dry. You can bank on this.
The “trocken” boom, unfortunately, didn’t get off to the greatest re-start in the 1980s. Many German winemakers went full-on in this boom, converting all the sugar in their grape must to alcohol before they figured out how to make a balanced dry white wine in Germany. Within a few years, though, they did figure it out…and were making beautiful trockens.
It was the Germans themselves who were thrilled the most. They took to the new generation of dry Rieslings like nobody’s business. If you saw two businessmen having lunch and drinking wine at a restaurant in Frankfurt—they were undoubtedly drinking DRY Riesling. To this day, about 80% of the Riesling consumed in Germany is bone-dry…and the rest consumed in Germany, sweet though it may be, is very sweet, super-expensive, concentrated, fabulous dessert wine, certainly among the world’s greatest. There is almost no consumption in Germany of the mass-market, lightly sweet wines that Americans associate with Germany!
I visited Germany on a wine writers’ trip in the mid-1980s…and freaked the hell out! Already tired of Chardonnay (with its heaviness, its high-alcohol, its frequent oak), I was treated, at fine German restaurants, to tall, cold wine glasses containing miraculous, graceful wines as dry, as pure, as complex as any white wines I’d ever had. There were a number of varietals represented, but the most spectacular one, over and over again, was Riesling. And…it was so widely flexible with food, so contributory to great dining.
At about that time, American sommeliers began to catch on as well. The growth over the last 25 years has been nothing short of amazing! Great guys like restaurateur/sommelier Paul Grieco have been beating the drum for decades…and, today, dry Riesling is among the very hottest wines for sommeliers across the country.
There are many dry Rieslings in Germany, from many sub-regions and, of course, from many different producers. But here are eight things that I love about dry German Riesling in general, eight things that make this my favorite dry white wine in the world:
1) ELEGANCE
This is kind of a composite quality, and difficult to pin down. All of the words in this section are essentially metaphors. But if you know what I mean by the “heaviness” of Chardonnay, its galumphin’, in-your-face quality—you might be able to imagine its opposite. Dry Rieslings have “cut,” they have a kind of crystalline quality, a quality that my importer buddy Terry Thiese describes as “filigree.” They are light and refreshing, while simultaneously important and deep. There is nothing in the world of wine quite like the “breed” of a great Riesling.
2) LOW ALCOHOL
The northern climate of German (i.e. less sunshine) yields, on average, the lowest-alcohol wines in the world. There’s many a good German Riesling with a little sweetness that registers at 9 to 10% alcohol! This helps to make them so light and appealing. The drier German Rieslings weight in at a little more alcohol…11%, 12%, 13%…but it’s very rare to find the number that’s so common in California Chardonnay…a whopping 14% alcohol and above. Among the many charms of dry German Riesling is that it doesn’t rattle your brains, and does let you drive home!
3) ACIDITY
Oh yeah! Probably the single component that most makes Riesling sing is its electric acidity! In places like California, they add acid to wine to make it a little livelier on the palate. Not so in Germany…where the natural zingy acidity harmonizes perfectly, naturally with a wine’s other aspects. The result for the drinker? A freshness unique in all the world…and the ability, like lemon juice, to cut through a million foods (smoked salmon, picnic meats, creamy fish dishes, cooked pork, and on and on and on.)
4) MINERALS
One of Riesling’s greatest attributes, to me, is the stony-minerally scent and flavor it so often carries. My wise-ass response to the white wine we Americans usually drink has oft been quoted: “If I want fruit, I’ll drink grape juice!” It has long been the other aspects of wine that form the basis of my vinous love affair. When a wine starts speaking rocks, earth, underground…that’s when I get interested! And Riesling speaks this language eloquently!
5) THE FRUIT THERE IS
Well, grapes are fruit…so every wine has to have some. And, frankly, when Riesling (usually in youth) shows its fruit…I like it! Despite my anti-fruit prejudice! The thing is…the typical young white wines, non-Riesling…exude this non-gastronomic kind of fruit that turns me off. It’s something like hyper-active pears and apples, bumped up by a little bubble gum. Of course I know that white Burgundy can be a lot more interesting than that—but it’s usually not the fruit that makes it so. In Riesling, when the pure fruit is reigning in youth…that fruit, often suggestive of flowers, peaches, nectarines, apricots…meshes with the brilliant acidity to form something truly mouthwatering. And fascinating. And gastronomic.
6) AGING
And now we’ve reached the best of all…well, almost. I LOVE the way German Riesling smells and tastes when it reaches 5-10 years old! And then…those bewitching aromas and flavors of age can continue to develop another 20 or 30 years…or more! Of which aromas do I speak? There are many, of course, in a complex, high-quality aged Riesling…but the most famous one is what the Brits call…”petrol!” That’s right…as Riesling ages, it begins to take on this hyper-minerality that is reminiscent of…petroleum. It is a unique thrill—an acquired taste for some, but a wonder first-time out for many. To me, it is one of the greatest, most gastronomic wine aromas in the world.
7) TRANSPARENCY
Now that we’ve discussed all the kinds of aromas and flavors that Riesling can yield…please recognize that as a kind of lagniappe from the wine gods…there is no grape in the world that translates its immediate environment into in-the-glass flavors and essences as felicitously as Riesling does! Wine people often froth on about “terroir”—a complicated French term, that refers to many aspects of a wine’s environment. But if you focus on what the soil contributes to a wine—no grape sucks up the essence of the specific soil as readily as Riesling. This is a bonus thrill for the knowledgeable: “check out the taste of Bernkasteler Doktor in that wine!” “look how Kallstadter Saumagen is expressed in that wine!” “Donnhoff always nails Norheimer Dellchen as he does in this wine!” And on and on.
8) FOOD-MATCHING
Lastly, the greatest good of Riesling. For me, wine is for food; a wine may be great, but if it doesn’t taste delicious with food, I have no interest in it. One of the reasons that sommeliers are going crazy with Riesling these days…is that they find it to be an all-purpose food-lover…or, as wine-writing legend Hugh Johnson once said to me about the matching abilities of German Riesling…”it’s the banker!” It cuts through heavy foods (like a big pork roast with sauerkraut). It complements light foods (like salads). It goes in a million different directions ingredient-wise…and cuisine-wise! Brilliant with French food, American food, Italian food…Riesling is also highly sympathetic with Asian foods of all kinds, and with spicy food in general. Save that Gewurztraminer for the gastronomic freak show…and break out the Riesling instead!
As you may have noticed, I’ve begun to import wine. I’ve already begun with the wonderful dry German Rieslings of Philipp Kuhn…but in the near future there’ll be scores more dry Rieslings…they will be the heart of my portfolio!
Philipp Kuhn
My mission is to bring in all kinds of wines that are easy, and elegant, and simultaneously complex…but they must be brilliant with food. And…I want them to be for everybody, at reasonable prices. Taking my advice on these wines is NOT like reading the Wine Spectator and getting their “definitive” ratings…which have no consistency, and which have nothing to do with the dinner table. Once you have come to know my palate, you may decide it’s not for you. No prob! But I suspect you’ll see the method in my madness, and, if you’re a true gastronome, it will become your madness too. A Rosengarten wine—which carries the sticker “A David Rosengarten Wine for Food”—will NEVER fall outside of my aesthetic! I will scour the world for these food-loving wines…and will hope to stem the world domination of Chardonnay and Cabernet!
I have ten categories of wine in my portfolio. Here’s a glimpse:
David Rosengarten’s Ten Wine Categories: The REAL Categories Every Wine-Lover Needs in His or Her Life!
(I estimate that 95% of the wine in wine shops falls outside of these categories!)
- Round, gentle, complex, affordable aged reds
- Dry, sleek, racy whites (for oysters, etc.)
- Dry Riesling, Chenin Blanc, and a few others, young and old (the best white-wine category for food-matching)
- Young, bouncy, juicy reds (other wines of the world in the sappy Beaujolais mode)
- Complex aged whites with tolerable wood (excellent cream sauce wines)
- Elegant mainstream reds…that’s mainstream but ELEGANT!
- Complex toasty-yeasty Champagne (or Champagne ringers)
- Crisp, clean, non-fruity sparkling wine
- Meaningful rosés, light on their feet but…bursting with fruit, or smoldering with almost-red-wine interest
- Complex, luscious, affordable dessert wines
Photos courtesy of the following, in order of appearance:
Homepage photo: www.summerofriesling.com; Post photos: www.newyork.metromix.com, Photograph by Clive Rutland from Colbury and Ashurst Theatrical Society’s production of Robin Hood and the Singing Nun, www.winebeing.com, www.blog.friendseat.com, www.themanfrommoselriver.com, Bigstock, Bigstock
