About 25 years ago I was walking through a trade tasting at which various Oregon wines were on display, and stopped at one table where a pourer was serving an Oregon Riesling. I took a sample and said to the server, “Smells a little like the Mosel.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” came a voice behind me, and the man who I turned to see was Peter Sichel, the man who made Blue Nun famous in the 1970s.

I handed my glass to Peter, an old friend even then, and Peter said, “Well, it IS like the Mosel!”

Thus was my introduction to Oregon Riesling, a category of wine that simply has flown under the radar for the last two decades, and which now has begun a slow resurgence.

Harry Peterson-Nedry of Chehalem Vineyards has seen Riesling over the last 30 years here and he is thrilled that Riesling is in comeback mode, even though nationally the wine is almost invisible.

“When I first started looking at the wine industry in 1980,” he said, “23% of everything that was growing in the state was Riesling. Since then, everything else has grown and only in the last few years has Riesling made a comeback.”

State statistics show that Oregon Riesling vineyard acreage has grown 32% in the last decade, but almost all of that growth has occurred in the last five years with the rapid growth in Riesling sales.

Still, only 800 acres of Riesling are growing in Oregon, most of it in the Willamette Valley area that is already wildly successful for Pinot Noir. Indeed, it is Oregon Pinot Noir that wholesalers and retailers want, and as a result both Riesling and Pinot Blanc, which the state makes so exceptionally, are lagging in sales nationally.

For a long while in the early years, Peterson-Nedry admitted, Riesling was a “cash-flow white that was fairly innocuous,” and much of it was sweet. He said most Oregon producers “weren’t serious about Riesling back then, and as a result Riesling languished for about 20 more years.”

The exception, he said, was “a small handful of very serious people who knew that this was arguably the best white wine in the universe. These were typically small producers who then grabbed Riesling and started treating it like Pinot Noir — growing the grapes better, getting smaller tonnages, and then seeing a wine with a transparency of the terroir.”

The best of Oregon Riesling is dry, and Peterson-Nedry said that at a tasting of 28 of the wines in early June, most of the wines were far better than they have ever been — “outside of the occasional flaws, which comes from having passionate but immature wine making. That’s the thing that needs to be watched.”

He said that scanner data do not come from places where is hand-selling. As a result, although grocery stores (most of which have scanners) show increases in Riesling sales, he said, Riesling sales growth is even greater at tasting rooms, restaurants, and at other places that sell direct to consumers where there is a knowledgeable sales person.

The dry style of wine is selling in part because much of it is in tasting rooms, where hand-sales are the norm. “The drier versions are popular anywhere there is hand-sell person.”

Peterson-Nedry estimates that about 10% of all Oregon Rieslings are bone dry (perhaps up to .5% residual sugar), and that medium dry wines account for perhaps 60% of the market, evenly split between medium dry and medium sweet.

In his estimation, Willamette Valley is the best region for Riesling, though some elevated places in the Umpqua Valley also make excellent Riesling.

Chehalem makes a small amount of a sparkling Riesling (called Sext!) that he says, “We can’t keep it in the tasting room more than a few months before selling out.”

He added that wines like this “are a lot more applicable to the things we are eating these days,” he said. It sells for all of $21.

One of the leaders in Oregon Pinot Noir is Argyle. Longtime wine maker Rollin Soles says he started with Riesling in 1988 from the old Cal Knudsen property, planted in the early 1970s.

“It’s my belief that Riesling, Chardonnay and a number of other white grapes don’t really show how great they are until they have produced a few crops,” said Soles, perhaps as many as eight harvests.

The key to most of the Argyle wines is that they were made dry, partly because Soles cut his teeth as a wine maker making dry, age-worthy Riesling for Brian Croser’s famed Petaluma Winery in Australia.

Working with Clare Valley fruit in Australia, Soles made wines that became superb with a decade or more in the bottle; as a result Argyle’s wines are striking with bottle age.

Part of the reason these wines hold so well is that Soles makes sure the pH levels of the wines is usually between 3.0 and 3.1. The wines show typical minerality, and usually have well under 1% residual sugar.

“I made one of America’s first dry-style Rieslings, and that got us into some very good restaurants,” he said.

The Knudsen vineyard from which his first wine came began to decline in the late 1990s, so 1999 was the last vintage off that original vineyard.

It was then that Argyle put in triple-density (“poor-man’s close-spacing”) Riesling vines on devigorating roostock, using a classic German clone.

“We took out vines that made $50-a-bottle Pinot Noir to do this,” he said, and now has six acres making a Riesling that sells for $18.

Soles sees a great following for the dry Riesling in London, “where the public seems to be about a decade ahead of American wine buyers.” Still, he acknowledges that dry Riesling sales are rising in the United States.

Another Oregon Riesling project worth looking at is at Brooks Vineyards in Amity. The family project makes some of the most stylish Riesling in America, some of which are not always showy when first released, but take dramatic nuances with a bit of time in the bottle.

Janie Brooks said the winery’s five acres of grapes, planted in the early 1970s, are augmented with some purchased fruit, and the winery now makes about 2,000 cases of mainly dry Riesling. Brooks also makes 300 cases of a medium sweet Riesling and about 150 cases of a Late harvest Riesling.

Brooks hired Chris Williams as head wine maker in 2006, and he has done a brilliant job of structuring the dry Rieslings. Early in their life, they show a superb though restrained fruit complexity, and then become sublime just a year or two after release.

“We have always done well with our dry Riesling,” she said, “and we are really hoping for a great result from Summer of Riesling,” the promotion in which literally more than 100 restaurants nationally will pour Riesling by the glass for all 94 days of summer.

“We have 10 restaurants in Portland area that are participating in Summer of Riesling,” she said. “From what I’ve found over the years trying to sell Riesling is that the key is to have it front of the right consumers – and this is great with a captive audience of foodies and wine lovers.”

Southern Oregon also makes some fascinating Rieslings, with Foris in the Rogue Valley among the most consistent producers. And Bridgeview’s Blue Moon Riesling, also of the Rogue, is one of the state’s most popular Rieslings, made in a slightly sweeter style.

I’ve been a big fan of Finger Lakes Rieslings for a long time, in part because of the intriguing variation of aroma and taste characteristics from within one region, which I’m still trying to understand.

When you want to know something about what’s in a particular wine, you typically go to a university viticulture and enology department and pose a specific question.

If the college does a research project on the issue, it may take years to get any meaningful results. But what happens when it’s hard to even formulate the question?

That’s the case with the Finger Lakes Riesling. One of the first questions that arose with this fast-growing category of wine wasn’t that complicated: Is there a distinctive regional difference between the Rieslings of the various areas of the Finger Lakes? And if so, what are the differences?

We could also ask, “Which specific attributes are worth fostering, and are there any negative attributes that are worth trying to minimize?” And, “Do these differences really exist? And if so, are they related to growing vines or to enological decisions?” And then came the confusing questions that make answering the first one so difficult:

• Do the Finger Lakes have such variable seasons that Riesling comes out radically different each

• Is the choice of yeast strain very important, slightly important, or unimportant in the final result? Does the temperature of fermentation affect any of this?

And it keeps getting worse.

From an intuitive point of view, Peter Bell, wine maker at Fox Run Vineyards, said that a few years ago he firmly believed there were differences between the various regions surrounding the lakes.

“I used to think that the west side of Keuka made more minerally kinds of wines,” said Bell, “but I have had to kind of change my mind in recent years. It seems to be that wine maker intervention trumps the regional issues, and today I see no discernable differences.

“I’m prepared to believe that all three — Keuka, Cayuga, and Seneca – make very similar wines.” Some of what Bell now believes came out of a recent Cornell University study coordinated by Anna Katherine Mansfield, assistant professor, who said that there may be some subtle differences, but that generally, “We see a need to define Finger Lakes Riesling as a whole.” Mansfield said “the challenge of east coast wine making” throws a monkey wrench into such investigations.

The research project was done on a site-specific basis, rather than sorting by lake. So the vineyards used were on the east shores of three lakes, Seneca, Keuka, and Cayuga.

“And what we found was, there were no significant differences,” she said.

In 2009, weather was so wet “no vines were water stressed,” and the differences between sites were subtly apparent. In 2010 it was warmer, causing some water stress — “and water stress affects the production of monoterpenes and the TDN [petroleum] notes could change.”

Mansfield said the research did find some differences in the wines from different regions, but there are many differences and variables.

She added, “You get more of the tropical flavors and pineapple from a southeast Seneca wine and the wines of the northwest shore show more lime and apple, and the wines are really steely and minerally on Keuka Lake, and the wines show less of the fruit forward character.” But she asked rhetorically if the differences were really related to the styles of the producers.

“And certainly it is related to the yeast strains used and the temperatures of fermentation — all of that impacts it.”

Bell said he was not “consciously bowing down to some altar of a similar style of wine; I’m not trying to toe the line of a style for this lake.”

Chris Gerling, also of Cornell, noted that weather in the Finger Lakes “is so variable that we have no standards of production from year to year. I have no idea what a typical year is for us. In 2009, it was so cool and moist wine makers were all asking how do you get the acid out? Then in 2010, we had the
opposite problem, lower acids.”

He said vintage variations make such investigations difficult to do. “2007 was not a prototypical year, it was warm and dry, and many people did different things in the vineyards.” That year, he said, there was a bit of rain in October, which had an effect on the final wines. “Some people picked before the rain, some people picked after.”

He said 2008 might have been better suited for a look into regional distinctiveness; “you might get a better handle on regional character. However, although there are more good characteristics in 2008, that may not magnify the differences more.

“And then what happens when some wineries use a synthetic cork? The wine may not last as long, or it might.”

So far, with mixed results as well as differing weather patterns, all we know for sure is that Riesling consumers around the world who have tasted these wines now get the fact that “Finger Lakes Riesling” is a phrase that automatically implies high quality, and still leaves us with questions of specificity that we have not yet answered – or even posed!

Americans are notorious for saying they like dry wine but drinking sweet wine.

For verification, look at the success over the years of Lambrusco, wine coolers, White zinfandel, the vast amounts of sweeter Chardonnay, the high-alcohols of many red wines (example: Zinfandel), and the fact that the bone-dry, crisp wines of Europe do best in New York and decline in sales radically the further west you go.

(Many New Yorkers were reared on the drier styles of wine they had access to from Europe, and haven’t had as much access to California’s sun-drenched, ultra-ripe wines for as
long.) So when the term Dry Riesling began to crop up a few years ago on the wine lists at chichi restaurants, ideally paired with the proper foods, it was a challenge to get people to actually try them. Sure, the gatekeepers understood these wines, and loved them, but the broad market was another story.

“When I’m at a walk-around tasting,” said one Riesling producer, “it’s like pulling teeth to get consumers to try my dry Riesling. What I often hear is, “Oh, Riesling, that’s gonna be sweet, right?’ It’s really frustrating.” As a result some of the finest bone dry Rieslings, including some fabulous efforts from Australia, are today only seen as a wine for the in crowd.

Yet it is New Zealand that, very quietly, has been on quite a roll with its “dry” Rieslings over the last five years.

The word dry here is used in quotation marks because actually the wines aren’t, strictly speaking, completely dry. Most of them contain a trace of residual sugar, but there is a vital reason for this.

The reason is acid. New Zealand is an island nation in the middle of a giant ocean, and as such as a strong maritime influence that leaves most wine with a plethora of acidity. This markedly cooler climate than most other wine-growing regions in the world leaves Riesling completely at risk to be so austere that no one would drink it if made with no residual sugar. The angularity and austerity would be off-putting.

To ameliorate the naturally higher acidity, New Zealand wine makers could do a number of things to make a richer and softer wine. Yet they know that such ideas would compromise the wines’ natural flavors.

One would be to add sugar to the fermentation to make a higher-alcohol wine. Another would be to add chemicals to raise the pH. Neither tactic makes a better wine.

As a result, most New Zealand Rieslings contain a bit more sugar, which harmonizes with the bracing acidity. The result is a wine with a trace of perceptible sugar in the entry (the first taste of the wine), but the acid then takes over, making the wines balanced and crisp in the finish.

Such terrific wines are now being widely seen as great matches with crab and more delicate seafood dishes, notably those made with a light cream sauce.

The majority of these wines come from the cooler South Island, and the names of the top producers are still new to most Americans. So the game to get the best is in its infancy.

The demand for New Zealand whites has grown rapidly in the United States. In the last 12 years, New Zealand has increased its plantings of its primary three aromatic grapes, Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Pinot Gris, fourfold — outstripping all other varietal grapes, including the popular Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.

Mainly, this is a strategy based on Kiwis’ knowledge of the interest of U.S. gatekeepers.

And Americans are catching on to these fine wines. NZ Riesling sales in the United States have grown some 50% since the early 2000s, and the growth is accelerating. In the last 12 months, New Zealand Riesling sales increased a whopping 50%, admittedly from a small base, and shipments rose an incredible 234% in December compared with December 2009..

The benefits of these wines are:

• Lower alcohols for some rather intensely aromatic wines. (Some wines are coming in well under 10%!)
• Aromas that have a bit more of the stone fruit and tropical fruit notes that are not similar to other countries’ Rieslings.
• An early drinkability because of the trace amounts of sugar.
• Bottle longevity since these wines are made with bracing natural acidity and retain their low pH levels, so vital for aging the wines.

And as a final bonus, almost every New Zealand Riesling being sold in the United States is screwcapped, which makes it easier to access the liquid.

New Zealand Riesling is a category to watch.

One of the nation’s most important and fast-growing wine categories is Dry Riesling. Right behind it is Medium Dry Riesling. We needn’t recount the number of places that can make this excellent wine, with its great opportunity as an alternative white as well as a wine of enormous cellar potential.

So the surprisingly cooler weather that most western North American viticultural regions experienced in 2010, notably in California and Washington State, the country’s largest Riesling producer, is either a major benefit or a huge drawback, depending on how wine makers deal with the grape and the wine.

Sweeter Riesling isn’t difficult to make or to justify. Newcomers to wine seem to prefer sweeter wines, regardless of the grape from which they come, and that includes some rather soft Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots that aren’t very flattering to the grape. As a result, sweeter Rieslings have been far more widely available. Used at picnics and especially for those who don’t like dry wine, they became a cheaper, easy to serve accompaniment to hot dogs and potato salad.

Most of this was not fine wine. In part because of its lower price, all Rieslings were tarred with the same brush, dooming the grape itself. Of course we all know that the grape was not to blame. It was the grape as grown in inappropriate regions (warm), and made into wines that were simply too simple and sweet to be considered very fine. In fact, to this day, a few “successful” (i.e., they sell) Rieslings are made with other grapes to help their aromas become exotic, such as Muscat and Gewurztraminer.

In the last decade or so, more and more Americans have seen the greatness of drier styles of Riesling, most notably from districts that are cool enough to grow the grape in ways that make the dry versions sublime.

Now along comes an unexpected development: a vintage in the west that is so cool that the grape stayed on the vine longer than usual, developing dramatic flavors that can make a great dry wine. But will it be? We’ll come back to this question in three paragraphs. But first:
Australian Riesling.

It is a category that exists with a halo Down Under. A huge percentage of the Australian wine-drinking population loves the wine, which is almost all entirely dry. Australia has More than 15,000 acres of Riesling growing, about twice as much as the entire United States, and little of it is made with sugar.

And Australian Riesling is catching on with Americans as a greater number of retailers, sommeliers, and wine lovers discover the wine. But thus far, it is not a major movement in the United States. True, superb dry versions from Germany (Trocken and halb-trocken) and Alsace, France, as well as Washington, Oregon, New York, Michigan and elsewhere have joined with the drier versions from northern and central California to create a new category that is not only slowly budding, but finding passionate adherents among wine lovers.

So now back to the query posed three paragraphs above, and the answer lies in how wine makers decide to treat the grapes from cool 2010. The flavors, to be sure, are all there, and the only “drawback” of the vintage is the acid.

It is high. Cooler vintages always give wine makers more acid than they need (and usually want) in all grapes, and with Riesling this is a tremendous benefit. In warmer years, acid additions are commonplace as acids are not as high.

With 2010 Riesling, the natural acidity was so high and pH levels so low that truly magnificent dry Riesling can be made. But many wine makers, and especially those with “sophisticated” marketing departments, fear high-acid wines. They assume the consumer will not appreciate them, and the result is that acids in a vintage such as this one tend to be compromised.

Wine makers can raise the pH of any wine by adding potassium bicarbonate, which has the effect of softening the wine, and making any residual sugars left in it to be that much more “visible” to the taste. Done perfectly, a Riesling may be benefited from such a procedure. But not always. Some people fear the consumer backlash against bone dry Riesling. But I can tell a story that may add depth to this subject.

At a major Riesling event in Canandaigua, N.Y., this past summer, I was asked to conduct an hour-long symposium on different styles of Riesling. The first wine I poured was the fabulous Tierce, the dry wine made as a joint venture of three great New York wineries, Red Newt, Anthony Road, and Fox Run.

The wine is dry. Indeed, at a symposium such as I conducted, about 75 persons were asked if they liked the wine. Most of them, newcomers to wines this dry, disliked it. I then conducted an experiment: I asked them to imagine they were just served some fresh pan-fried trout with butter and lemon and perhaps a trace of tarragon. And then I asked if they would sip the wine again and see what their reaction would be to it, knowing that the main dish they were imagining eating would make a difference.

I then asked for a show of hands how many people could imagine liking the wine under those circumstances. About 20 people raised their hands. No, it’s not a solution to the issue of bone-dry Riesling, but it gives us a clue that a tiny bit of marketing that includes Riesling as a dinner table companion can work to educate people who may be unfamiliar with wines like this.

The 2010 growing season gives us the chance to make a lot of wines like this, dry and loaded with minerality and character. Yes, it can be a challenge to the palates of newcomers, but for Riesling lovers, 2010 is a rare opportunity to make wines that excite those who are willing to try really dry Riesling and come back for more.

If, on the other hand, wine makers take the easy road and soften and sweeten their 2010 Rieslings, they may be squandering an opportunity that comes along only infrequently.

Dan Berger publishes Dan Berger’s Vintage Experiences (www.vintageexperiences.com), writes for numerous other publications, and is well-known for his expertise and passion for Riesling.

One of the world’s finest but least recognized white wines is Riesling as it is expressed by producers in the Alsace region of France, which has a checkered past and a  possibly explosive future.

A hilly, northern European region that sits along the eastern border to Germany, Alsace is one of the rare regions of the world where its reputation as a wine-growing district has been scarred by international politics. The district has been left, since the Second World War, to regenerate its reputation as a world-class area with minimal tools.

And although it gains plaudits these days for one grape variety, it is probably only the second best grape in the region.

Gewurztraminer is Alsace’s current star performer, but the potential exists for Alsace to become a 21st century superstar using Riesling for its torchbearer.

The area has been under German rule numerous times in its history and has German parentage in the deep past. The now-French region today lives dichotomously. Both French and German are spoken, with Alsacien (a dialect unique to the region) a third language option.

What makes Alsace tick today are its Gewurztraminers, praised for their outrageously flamboyant aroma of lichees, rose petals, wildflowers, honey, and unctuous textures. Such wines have become all the rage with some wine collectors in the last two decades, and as they have been praised, so have their late-harvested flavors become more and more exotic. And so have their prices soared.

By contrast, Riesling is the shy little brother, perfectly content to display its charms most modestly. Almost the complete antithesis of Gewurztraminer, Riesling’s aromatics when the wine is young are reticent to the point of being nearly nonexistent. Minerals, steely under-ripe citrus fruits, and even mild grassy characteristics can be evident, and the taste of the wine is often so crisp and lean that some people simply assume the wine is forever going to be a sourpuss.

Yet the charm of dry Riesling from Alsace is that the word dry isn’t compromised. The actual amount of sugar in these wines often stays between zero and about a half percent, with acids that are naturally high. Thus the wines come out most austere.

The reputation for such wines among Alsace Riesling connoisseurs is intact since these are the folks who understand how best to treat the wines — which is with great time in the cellar. With patience, the wines reward as few others. Indeed, Australia’s legacy for world class Riesling is embedded in the way the wines age, one of the reasons Aussie wine buyers love them and the key reason we buy such wines.

But Alsace may have developed the template. Drinking a young Alsace Riesling is an exercise in self-flagellation. Or it is done with purpose, the way a bone dry wine works with oysters and other such light-flavored, mineral-y foods.

It wasn’t always thus. During most of its 80-plus years of German rule, Alsace Riesling was under pressure. Germany knew of its greatness with Riesling, which was already widely recognized, and as a result Alsace region was encouraged to make simple table wines. Riesling was de-emphasized.

After the WWII ended, Alsace began re-establishing itself as a French wine- growing region (with varietals permitted on the highest-caliber wines. But for more than a decade, it was clear that its occupational past had harmed the image and for years vineyard owners and producers could gain little international distribution. Sales were spotty.

It wasn’t until the 1970s, when vineyards began to get replanted with better techniques and grapes, that the wines began to be taken more seriously. And those who understood dry Riesling began to view Alsace Riesling as wine with more personality. Slowly, Alsace began to reenter the world market with that grape.

Today, with Riesling racing ahead as a world-class variety, and with wine lovers rediscovering the potential for these dry wines, Alsace may well be positioned to take advantage of the inquisitiveness of members of the Millennial Generation and their fascination with discovering vinous treasures.

It won’t happen overnight. For one thing, the average Chardonnay-buying American wine drinker is basically an occasional wine drinker, and for such a buyer, the mere mention of the word Riesling indicates a sweet wine. And for them, the greatness of German Riesling, such as the fascinating QbAs and Kabinetts, is in the sweetness that merely verifies their belief. (They know not of Trocken…)
Until the French mount an educational campaign to begin to reveal the charms of Alsace Riesling, the image of sweet wine will persist, and the glories of a 20-year-old Alsace Riesling will remain only a rumor.

I met with Grossett in the grand entranceway at the 13th Australian Wine Industry
Technical Conference in Adelaide in mid-2006, and the fervor Grossett showed for the
organization (of which he had previously heard not a word, since it had not then been formed!)
was a bit surprising since I long ago knew that Australia has a long and glorious history with
Riesling that dates back to the earliest days of Barossa Valley’s German settlers in the early
1800s.

So strong is the Riesling culture in Australia that the subject has been well covered by the
country’s plethora of wine writers, many of whom treat the grape and the wine the way American
wine writers treat Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon. Aussie wine columnists do annual
columns on the state of Riesling of the latest harvest; they track the quality level of Rieslings
from various regions and houses, and above all they wax poetic about the glories of aged
Riesling, a topic only one U.S. wine columnist has ever addressed more than once. Few ever
have.

Aussie Riesling has its own vibrant subculture in Australia, a fact little known outside the
country. Yet when first-time Australian Riesling consumers try the wines, whether the wines are
from the most recent vintage or long-cellared treasures, most newcomers are shocked by the style

of wine.

Because not only are these wines dry, they are also remarkably crisp, lean, minerally and
lemon-sour tart. Not even German wines designated Trocken (dry) are this austere. The only
parallel that fits here is Muscadet-lean, and I mean that in the most ascetic way.

Not that the wines are hard to drink by themselves, but with wines this crisp, the best
things to do with them are (a) serve them with food, or (b) age them.

Now, on the face of it, aged Riesling sounds like a distinct contradiction to the common
wisdom — that all white wines should be consumed as fast as possible. Some 30 years ago, I
believed that.

My reeducation began in the mid-1970s when I was first exposed to some German,
Alsacienne and Australian Rieslings that had been properly stored. Some of these wines had a bit
of residual sugar, and were structured properly to make it past one year.

It started for me with German Rieslings when an importer friend served me a 1967 Spätlese
that was utterly sublime. When well-made wines are aged a decade or two, any sugar in such
wines tends to become subsumed into its complexity. And the sugar isn’t as sweet.

At 20 years, the character is an astounding combination of things like petroleum (the
Germans call it “toast”), lichee nuts, toasted pine nuts, cynar, and a range of other elements too
numerous to detail.

Most American Rieslings were never made to be aged properly past a year or two because
acid and pH levels were not in the proper range, and thus most American Riesling buyers drew
the conclusion that they are made to be consumed young only.

Since that was the prevailing opinion, wineries made the wines softer and sweeter, and
the result was wines that were essentially soft, innocuous, and simple. Sure, they can be
charming. Served with a sweet Asian chicken salad with a sesame-ginger-honey dressing, they
delight on a warm spring afternoon, or a hot summer evening.

The real problem with sweeter Rieslings is that they too often lack acidity, which some
buyers equated with their drink-now mode.

Australians, on the other hand, have developed a palate for the bone-dry style of wine that
seems to dominate Aussie Rieslings. When the grapes are harvested as early as they are for that
style of wine, the natural aromas lean more toward the lime, pine, mint, juniper, stone fruit,
minerals, or even underbrush in a rain forest, which replaces guava/pineapple tropical fruit of
young Rieslings from warmer climes.

Such wines then evolve into magnificent and complex elixirs over years. Sure, it does
take getting used to. Learning to like older Riesling is a taste one acquires the way we gain a love
for mature oloroso sherry, old Rioja or Chianti, or even White Burgundy.

One reason Grossett was so keen on becoming part of the fledgling organization had little
to do with selling the wines to a broader audience. Grossett and many top Australian producers
already make and sell a lot of Australian Riesling at home and in Asia, where it is prized.

No, what captivated Grossett was that an organization seemed ripe for furthering
Riesling’s cause, broadening the awareness of Australian styles of the grape and its wines. Which
is what this article, four years after our meeting, is all about.

Today we have access to a great number of superb and reasonably priced Australian
Rieslings, offering us a chance to get wines with the structure to go the long haul. Almost all are
dry and made with bracing acidity.

Most of the best Rieslings from Australia have come into the United States over the last
decade made to sell for about $15 to $20 a bottle. A tiny handful (such as Grossett’s Polish Hill
wine from Clare Valley) sell for $20 to $30.

The culture of Riesling in Australia is so strong that it has reached into a vital second
stage of development, quality assessments based on vintage, and now a third stage, regional
distinctiveness.

Clare Valley, well north of Adelaide (about a two-hour drive), is a cooler region with
days warm enough to ripen red wine grapes, but with late afternoon breezes and evening cold to
make it a perfect climate for Riesling. It appears to be the most important Riesling area in
Australia.

A close second is the smaller and actually colder Eden Valley, which is actually a high
plain above the Barossa. About a quarter of a mile high in altitude, Eden Valley makes slightly
different but still classic Australian Rieslings with a personality all their own.

Many other regions now grow Riesling with Western Australia and Coonawarra
contributing some phenomenal efforts.

Though it has grown Riesling for a long time, Australia began to display Riesling
greatness in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s that John Vickery’s Leo Buring Rieslings
began to establish the regional characteristic of Clare Valley that soon become the iconic style for
which we recognize Australian Riesling. His nearly 1970s Rieslings are still being displayed to
this day to oohs and ahhs by Aussie collectors. He remains one of the top Australian wine makers
to this day.

Recent steps toward Riesling greatness in other districts, such as the Yarra Valley, Great
Southern, Gippsland, the Grampians, Adelaide Hills, Tasmania, and Orange were recognized in
the new 2010 book “Riesling in Australia” by wine maker Ken Helms and Trish Burgess. This is
a superb book that is at present available only in Australia. (Log onto http://
www.helmwines.com.au for details.)

Because it is such an acquired taste, Australia’s top Rieslings are still a relatively slow

sell on the U.S. market, but those who understand the wine’s remarkable aging potential are
benefitting from close-outs and deep discounts for what some retailers see as “old” Riesling.

It may well be time for more U.S. wine collectors to educate themselves to such glories
before prices for mature Rieslings, instead of falling, rise to their appropriate levels.

After a trip to speak at a New York viticulture symposium, I arranged to bring back home a number of New York Rieslings, all from the Finger Lakes, and poured them blind for the Vintage Hills Tasting Group.

This group, mainly composed of Sonoma County wine makers, meets numerous times a year in the labs of various Northern Sonoma wineries to try wines of all kinds. Recent tastings have included Alsace Gewurztraminers and New Zealand Pinot Noirs.

When I proposed the New York Riesling tasting, a number of members were very excited since they had heard a lot about the wines, but few had ever tasted more than one or two.

What was fascinating for me was not the positions of the wines after the tasting, but that the wine makers were really in love with most of the wines. Also of interest is that even where there was residual sugar ion a wine, it seemed to be perfectly balanced by great acidity.

Very little Riesling is made in Sonoma County (a lot more by percentage comes from Lake and Mendocino counties), yet the tasters gave superb tasting notes to all wines except one, which was (alas) corked.

The winning wine was 2008 Anthony Road, a dry wine that still has a succulent finish. The wine makers’ descriptors included flinty, slate, peach, petrol, and a hint of geranium. One taster felt the wine’s acidity was a tad low, but he still praised the wine for its balance.

Second place was 2008 Dr. Konstantin Franc Semi-Dry that most tasters believed would work nicely with crab or lobster. Descriptors included floral/terpene, peach, pear, and pumpkin. Main comments were that the wine might have said Semi-Dry on the label, but the acid was high enough so the wine’s finish was relatively dry.

Third was a sweeter wine from Columbia Crest in Washington (a ringer I included, and which I ranked 11th out of 12). The wine makers liked the way the residual sugar worked with the acid, and two believed the wine to be from Germany. A few of the wine makers saw the wine as atypical of the rest of the group.

Fourth overall was 2007 Sheldrake Point Dry (lime, waxy, and complex) with superb acidity, a real food wine. I have had this wine many times since its release and love how it works with Thai food.

Fifth overall, and my first place wine, was 2008 Red Tail Ridge Dry, a wine of immense spice, faintly waxy with an aroma of dried flowers, apricot and peach. The wine, from Lake Seneca’s western shore, has a trace of residual sugar and superb acidity to balance it.

Other Rieslings scoring high with the Sonoma judges were 2007 Fox Run, 2008 Lamoreaux Landing, 2008 Dr. Frank Dry, and 2008 Lakewood Vineyards.

Needless to say, Finger Lakes Riesling has arrived as a superb wine. And for the last few years, California wine maker Scott Harvey has used Finger Lakes Riesling fruit for his Jana Riesling, a great project that proves that this category has a fast-growing following.

A final comment on the Riesling tasting: One of the best tasters with the Vintage Hills group is a long-time wine maker who has experience with a wide range of Rieslings. During the tasting, a number of the tasters commented on the fact that some of the New York versions showed traces of petroleum. The comments came from a few of the younger tasters.

Finally, a tad exasperated with such comments, the older wine maker said, “You people need more experience with great Rieslings. Then you’d realize that petroleum is a fruit!”

The Riesling Taste Profile was created by the International Riesling Foundation (IRF), a global nonprofit organization formed to promote Riesling as the world’s most noble white wine variety. The need became apparent when IRF-commissioned market research by Wine Opinions reaffirmed that many consumers still think of Riesling only as “a sweet white wine” despite the wide range of tastes it can represent.

Major producers in the largest Riesling producing states—Washington, California, Oregon, Michigan and New York—will be using the Taste Profile, along with some wineries from other states and countries including Germany, Australia and New Zealand. A partial list of wineries using the Taste Profile is shown below, with the range of wines dramatically illustrating why such a consumer-friendly tool is needed.

Riesling was the fastest growing varietal in the United States in 2009, with an 8.3% increase in sales, according to data from the Nielsen Company. Widespread use of the Riesling Taste Profile is likely to accelerate that growth by making Riesling more understandable, predictable, and consumer-friendly.

(In some countries such as Canada, Germany, and South Africa there are regulatory restrictions preventing its use on labels of wines sold within the country, but wines exported to the United States may include it. In addition, some wineries like Cave Spring in Canada and Paul Cluver Wines in South Africa are using the Taste Profile on point-of-sale merchandizing materials, which is perfectly allowable.)

The Taste Profile involves voluntary technical guidelines for Riesling producers in describing their wines for consumers along with four graphic options that may be used on a back label, point-of-sale materials, and elsewhere. Several examples of such use are shown in the Riesling Taste Profile section of the IRF web site, drinkriesling.com, which also contains everything necessary to download and customize the Taste Profile and related point-of-sale materials.

“Riesling may be made in many styles from bone dry to sweet, and this versatility can be both a strength and a weakness,” said California wine journalist Dan Berger who spearheaded the IRF project in consultation with many Riesling wine makers. “Riesling’s many styles can fit almost any taste preference, but consumers may be put off if they are expecting one taste and get another. The taste profile will enhance Riesling’s strength by letting consumers know the basic taste before they open or even buy the bottle.”

To help wine makers consider which terms to use for various wines, the committee developed a technical chart of parameters involving the interplay of sugar, acid, and pH which helps determine the probable taste profile of a particular wine. Another key step in the project was to identify appropriate terms for describing the relative dryness or sweetness of the wine. After extensive deliberations, the four categories selected are: Dry, Medium Dry, Medium Sweet, and Sweet. (Some producers continue to use Semi-Dry or Semi-Sweet on their front labels, but the Taste Profile uses “Medium” in both cases.)

“It is important to understand that these are simply recommended guidelines which we think may be helpful, but the program is entirely voluntary,” said Berger. “We are encouraged that many Riesling producers are already using the system because it will help consumers, and therefore help the wineries as well.”

The next step was to develop a simple graphic design showing the four levels from Dry to Sweet, and
a simple indication of where a particular wine falls. This design may be used on back labels, merchandising materials, web sites and elsewhere. The goal is to have a common, simple, consumer-friendly system for identifying Riesling tastes.

With substantial input from IRF Board members who are Riesling producers, New York-based artist Book Marshall developed four options (shown below) which may be used by wineries, depending on their back label space and design. The preferred design is #1, which includes the words, “This Riesling is…” above the bar, and “International Riesling Foundation” with a logo below it.

“This is a very important project, and we’re grateful to Dan Berger and others who spent many hours on this,” said Jim Trezise, President of the IRF. “With Riesling’s surging popularity among consumers, making this versatile wine more understandable and user-friendly could accelerate its growth.”

The Riesling Taste Profile was developed in time to be available for use by northern hemisphere wineries on wines from the 2008 vintage. While several producers used it on those wines marketed in 2009, its use in 2010 will be far more widespread. There is no fee to use it, and the copyright was obtained only to protect against incorrect use.

The IRF Riesling Taste Profile is also being adopted by major international wine judgings such as the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits, and Riverside International, competitions, as the basis for their Riesling categories.

The IRF’s mission is: “To increase awareness, understanding, trial and sales of Riesling wines through a comprehensive, integrated system of industry cooperation, research, trade education, and consumer communication.”

PDF of press release

A complainant wrote to me recently to say that my comments that there were a plethora of fascinating Rieslings from many places in the world were, in his words, mindless.

His point was that there was but one Riesling and it came from Germany, and that all others were mere pretenders. And, from what I gathered from his remarks, no others were worth drinking.

In a way, I sympathized with his myopia. There is no question that the absolute paradigm for this superb grape is Germany, with its difficult soils, its hard-to-predict weather, and its myriad of other problems not the least of which is the way certain sub-regions impact how the aromas and flavors will develop.

But to dismiss all other Rieslings as unworthy to consume is a rather narrow view, and one that indicates that the writer probably has never tried a Riesling from Austria, Alsace, or Australia with their distinctive personalities. Or any others.

It is easy to dismiss that which you have never tried. But even if this writer had tried others and found them un-Germanic, is that any reason to declare all the others mere charlatans? Those of us who have tried the great Rieslings of New York might likewise dispute the fact that a Riesling from Colorado deserved to win a major international wine tasting a couple of years ago. I was all set to dispute this result until a recent trip to Colorado where I was stunned by the quality of many wines, not the least a few Rieslings (not to mention a simply remarkable Gewurztraminer).

Were any of these wines Germanic in character? No. Not close. But neither are any of the superb bone-dry Rieslings of Australia’s Clare and Eden valleys Germanic, in the strict sense of the word, and yet the characteristics they offer, though radically different from those found in Germany, still deliver a distinctiveness that is the grape as rendered by another soil and climate.

And isn’t that a commanding statement of how great a grape Riesling is? Despite wildly differing growing conditions, only Riesling can make a locally acknowledged great wine with little dispute — and in a wine that shows the identifiability of the grape.

Take Cabernet Sauvignon for example. Bordeaux is the worldwide model, but some have confused Napa Cabernet for Bordeaux ands vice versa. But in recent years, purists seem to prefer Bordeaux. Burgundy may be the world’s best place to grow Pinot Noir, but a number of cooler-climate Californian Pinot Noirs as well as New Zealand offerings are now making a challenge, suggesting that Burgundian flavors can be extracted from regions other than Burgundy. But Burgundy remains the wine lovers’ wine of choice (if price is no object).

It is clear that wines from the paradigm-ic regions remain still captivate wine lovers and remain first in their hearts.

But put a well-chosen Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, Temecula, or Tasmanian Riesling down in front of a wine lover, and he or she might note (quickly) that it is not German, but also may point out the delight of Riesling aromas and flavors that the wine delivers.

No, it may not be German, but there is an indefinable quality to the wine that says, “This is Riesling,” and that may be all that one needs to know that a good drink is ahead.

Yes, it’s fine to be pro-German Riesling. Our cellar has loads of them. But we are also at least as much in love with the grape as we are the paradigm, and we are trying with delight Rieslings from Mendocino County, southern Washington, Italy and Chile, and even places like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia that defy the statement “you can’t do that here.”

Riesling is so great a grape that it can perform where other grapes only can make a pretender.

I opened a bottle of Spanish Sherry the other day that had on its front label the words “Medium Dry.”

And this brought to mind a possible problem with the International Riesling Foundation’s taste scale, which has so far been seen as a great addition to the wine labels of numerous wineries around the world.

The term “Medium Dry” is, as we know, rather relative in that it is based on a relationship between the wine’s sugar and its acidity, with a pH adjustment factor added in.

In most cases this will work just fine. However, as I sipped this rather sweet Sherry, it dawned on me that we had a dilemma. That is, when using the Riesling taste scale, we have to assume a moderate alcohol level.

The Sherry, of course, was fortified, so its sugar and acid were hard to asertain since the alcohol was listed as 17%. Which is a lot more than most Rieslings will ever see.

But the alcohol level of Riesling is a concern when it comes to structural balance of a wine, and this relates as much to German wines as it does to Rieslings from other countries. It is a factor, too, for many other table wines.

It is well known that any table wine reaching high alcohol levels (I’d say 15% for white wines and 16% for reds are both a bit on the high side) can become a problem for the overall structure of the wine. High alcohol almost always leaves a wine with a sense of sweetness, even if no actual sugar is there.

With the alcohol levels in excellent Riesling typically low (in the 10% to 13% range in most cases), our IRF taste scale is quite workable. (Of course, the same exact wine would be radically different if one fraction was fermented to dryness at 13% and another portion of the same wine was reduced in alcohol to 10%, but that’s not a likely scenario.)

But if you take this issue to its most illogical conclusion, imagine that a wine maker, for reasons I won’t even dare to guess, chooses to pick his Riesling grapes at 26 degrees Brix, ferments the wine down to 1% residual surag (10 grams per liter), and then does not de-alcoholize the wine. And further let us assume there is a Riesling out there with sufficient acidity and a low enough pH to warrant being called medium dry on a technical basis.

If this wine has an alcohol level of, say, 15.5%, would it be seen as really “medium dry” by most tasters? I’m guessing this “chicken with three legs” would taste rather sweet, and be, at best, seen as medium sweet.

Clearly this is a curious wine and is not one that would command much attention by Riesling purists.

But the message of this week is that alcohol cannot be ignored in the grand scheme of things. And yet for the IRF to have factored alcohol into the taste scale would have made for a three-dimensional technical chart that would have caused more confusion than clarity.

As you think of the taste scale, remember that the unspoken fly in the ointment is the alcohol. We at the IRF are all fully aware of this dilemma, and may address the glitch in the future.

For now, we are seeing wineries around the world adopt the tasting scale for their labels and sales and marketing campaigns. And to that we say, hat’s off!