“Things change, but they don’t change. That’s all I’m saying,” Chuy exclaimed.
Chuy had just finished one of his very funny rants. He started talking about education and how computers would soon make cursive writing obsolete, that cursive writing class was the modern day equivalent to Latin class in our day. From there he jumped to the state’s inability to come up with a budget without draining designated monies from the education fund which led him to over-worked teachers in desperate need of a drink which led him to the Riesling he had brought over.
We were drinking a 2008 St. Urbans-Hof Riesling. The wine was perfect for our Sonoma summer afternoon. It had crisp, clean acidity and a surprising lushness of apple and stone fruit flavors layered on top of the typical mineral backbone of a good Mosel. The delightful 9-1/2 percent alcohol meant we could finish the bottle without too much worry about getting through the rest of the afternoon in decent shape.
“Thirty years ago, Riesling was the most popular white wine in the world; only a handful of white Burgundies came close to the majesty, elegance and complexity of great Riesling,” elaborated Chuy. “Now, you can hardly find the stuff on a shelf.”
“He’s right,” thought Jake Lorenzo, private eye. Riesling used to be considered the greatest of white wines. The California Chardonnay boom of the 1980s took care of that. Millions of cases of over-oaked, slightly sweet, generic tasting Chardonnay had become the white wine of choice for the burgeoning American wine drinker. Before you knew it, Riesling was nowhere to be found, outside of the occasional enclaves of retired Air Force personnel in Colorado who refused to give it up after discovering Riesling’s charms while being stationed in Germany.
Jake Lorenzo has watched a lot of fads sweep through the American wine business. Certain varieties become hugely popular and then fade back into obscurity. New styles come into vogue and then slowly retreat back to more traditional expressions. But in all my years of wine drinking, I’ve never seen a variety as esteemed as Riesling plummet so deeply out of favor for so long.
Of course, I’m talking about the American wine market and American wine writers. In the rest of the world, Riesling is doing just fine. Riesling accounts for more than one-fifth of all the grapes planted in Germany and Alsace. Riesling is second only to Grüner Veltliner in Austria, and it is doing well in Australia. Riesling is popular in Canada where it is the variety of choice for Ice Wine, and even in the United States it does well back East and around the Great Lakes region. The state of Washington grows a lot of Riesling; in fact Ste. Michelle has partnered with the well known German producer Dr. Ernest Loosen and is now the world’s largest producer of Riesling at 600,000 cases annually. Go figure.
One of the great things about Riesling is that it is very terroir expressive. That is, it tastes like where it is grown. In Germany, that means flowery, perfume-like aromas with apple, pear and stone fruit flavors. Grown primarily in slate soils, German Rieslings tend toward good minerality and, with aging, develop a prized petrol character. German Rieslings are rarely blended, almost never use commercial yeasts and hardly ever see oak of any kind. Alcohols tend to be modest, often under 10 percent, and the terrific natural acidity allows them to age gracefully for many years.
Germans are nothing if not organized. Riesling is their favorite grape and they take great delight is devising prädikat levels announcing the sweetness of the wine. There are wonderful dry Rieslings, sweeter spatleses and ausleses all the way up to beerenauslese and trockenbeerenauslese. These sweeter wines retain wonderful balance due to the natural acidity, and that acidity in conjunction with the sugar makes the wines remarkably age worthy.
Alsatian Rieslings start with riper fruit than most of their German counterparts. The soil is calcareous; and while the aromas and flavors are similar to German Riesling, Alsatian wines tend to be rounder and fuller in the mouth and almost always have more alcohol, 12 to 13 percent. Alsatian Rieslings do well with aging and in special years develop botrytis for intensely sweet, complex wines. One of Jake Lorenzo’s fondest memories is a delightful dinner we had at the home of Bernard Trimbach, proprietor of the famed Trimbach winery where we tasted Rieslings that went back 20 years. They were remarkable, fresh, crisp, complex and redolent of what the French call goût petrol. It was truly spectacular.
Austrian Riesling is more thick bodied, usually pushes 13 percent alcohol and has a characteristic white pepper finish probably due to the granite and mica soils. Australia produces flowery Riesling with an oily texture and lots of citrus character. Unctuous botytized versions are popular and well done.
In the cellar, Riesling requires careful handling. You don’t want to bruise the fruit or press too hard because it can cause tannins to leach out and make the wine harsh. Cold settling, racking off lees and fermenting clear, clean juice is essential. Cold fermentation temperatures draw out the complex fruit flavors and careful bottling will get those flavors into the bottle.
The balance of sugar and acidity in Riesling pairs beautifully with food. Fish, shell fish and pork are natural pairings; but Riesling also stands up to spice, making it the perfect wine for Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai cooking. Because acidity balances salt, Riesling is great with cold cuts, sauerkraut and sausages. And as Chuy and I can attest, a cold bottle of Riesling is perfect on a warm summer day.
Jake Lorenzo loves a rich, complex red wine, but the current high alcohol style in vogue today can get tiresome to the palate. This detective likes ripe fruit as much as anyone, but to paraphrase Chuy, “There’s ripe and then there’s ripe, that’s all I’m saying.” High alcohol wines are hard to pair with food, and it is difficult to finish a whole bottle and still enjoy it. By the end of a huge monster red, my palate is not looking to that last glass with anticipation. In fact, the only anticipation I have is whether or not I’ll wake up with a headache from the high alcohol in the bottle.
Riesling, on the other hand, is eminently quaffable. Crisp, fresh, fruity and delicious, Riesling allows you to enjoy glass after glass without fear of having to pay the piper. Two bottles of good Riesling at nine percent alcohol is about the same as one bottle of 16 percent Zinfandel, especially when you factor in the amount of time it will take to consume those two bottles.
If Riesling comes back into favor, it could make breathalyzer tests as obsolete as Latin class or cursive writing. If winemakers rediscover the charms of good wine with 9 percent alcohol, maybe they will back off from the abyss of high alcohol upon which they find themselves. If consumers discover a whole new world of delicious, complex wines, most of which are very reasonably priced, they may learn that Riesling has been produced for more than 400 years and that there is more to the white wine world than Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.
If Riesling makes a full comeback then Chuy makes sense. Things change, but they don’t change. That’s all I’m saying. wbm
