Riffing On Riesling

Dex:

The all-fruit, no-wood, low-alcohol wine is the ultimate summer sipper

Author (verbose):

By Anthony Gismondi
Illustration By Karen Klassen
Photography By Jared Sych

Summary:

Riesling's renaissance is just in time for summer sippin'.

Body:

Will this be the summer when the much-talked-about riesling renaissance finally takes hold in Calgary? Many industry insiders believe it is time the noble white grape that was the toast of the wine world only a century ago is restored to its former glory.

Ironically, it’s the fresh floral, fruit flavours of grapes grown outside Germany — in Australia, New Zealand, Washington State and New York’s Finger Lakes, as well as Canada’s Niagara and Okanagan wine regions — that are leading the rush back to riesling.

That is all fine with Johannes Selbach, one of several modern-day riesling ambas-sadors from Germany. Selbach, proprietor of Zeltingen-based Selbach-Oster in the Mosel, and a regular visitor to Canada, will take whatever help he can get.

“You don’t have to beat down the walls anymore to get people to taste or buy riesling — that’s past,” he says. “Worldwide, it’s like everybody has put it back on the map. We see new business in Russia and in Asia, beyond Japan and Hong Kong. All the new markets that were heavily, heavily into red wines are now rediscovering whites, and riesling is one of them. Even in Germany, believe it or not, people are drinking a lot more riesling.”

Much of the success of riesling is its ability to pair well with food. At Selbach-Oster, the philosophy is to make elegant, crisp, low-alcohol, but full-flavoured wines. “Our ideal,” says Selbach, “is to make wines that reflect the parents of the wine — the mineral-rich slate soil and the ripe, juicy riesling fruit.”

In that vein, Selbach is enjoying a great deal of success with the Selbach Riesling Dry Fish Label — a wine he designed for food, hence the fish on the label. It has all the classic Mosel notes. It is fresh, clean and juicy, with green apple, white peach and spicy mineral flavours.

Here in Canada, you can expect more riesling to appear in restaurants thanks to some impressive domestic releases from Joie, Tantalus, Wild Goose and CedarCreek in British Columbia, and Hidden Bench, Flat Rock, Cave Spring, Creekside and Tawse in Ontario.

In South Australia, the tangy and often lime-flavoured rieslings with a whiff of petrol have a longer history, in part because of the region’s early German immigrants. While the warm Barossa Valley floor proved to be challenging to a grape better suited to cooler environments, much success has been found in the higher, cooler reaches of the Clare and Eden Valleys.

Wines that have made an impression of late include the new Penfolds Reserve Riesling from Eden Valley and the Pewsey Vale labels of Heggies. Other market notables include Wolf Blass, Goundrey, Grosset, Henschke and Yalumba, all now comfortably under screwcap.

Farther south in cooler New Zealand, the best rieslings are grown at Wairarapa at the southern end of the North Island to the Marlborough and parts farther south on the South Island. There, the intense fruit flavours reach from apricots and peaches to limes and apples. Most are dry or medium dry, with better acid than many of their Australian cousins. The trick here is to consider serving riesling with cheese. In this case, riesling can be a terrific match with Le Bleu Bénédictin. Look for the likes of Isabel, Stoneleigh or Villa Maria.

French rieslings, from Alsace, are generally drier than most and often more full-bodied, but it’s the citrus and mineral flavours that make them great food wines. Producers to look for include Ostertag, Trimbach, Sparr, Hugel, Trimbach and Zind-Humbrecht.

Whether it’s a renaissance, a revolution or even just an evolution, riesling is back and it’s the freshest breeze to blow through the wine sector in a century.