Riesling Today

California wine makers can be rather inquisitive, so it was a great deal of pleasure last month for me to pour for them a number of wines they had never tasted.

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!”