This exactly. Some wines can go down to the ballpark of 0,5-1 g/l RS, but most wines hover around 1-4 g/l, even red wines. Most of the time if you want to go sub-1 g/l, you need to use quite aggressive yeasts to go down there reliably. If you do spontaneous ferments, it’s often just pure luck.
Hey, Adam, I think I’ll take back my take back of Uli Stein. I think you should try one of his trockens. No label issues, and he hates German wine laws. RS? Yes. Perceptually dry and tasty as hell? Yes.
Did any of those show a scale on the label and indicate a specific point, not “range”, at the extreme of dryness? He wanted to try something specific. This wine was advertised as what he was looking for. People are beating a dead horse about the subjectivity of the terms used by both sources on the wine. He knew that. But the scale on the label backed up those words, indicating no to extremely low RS. So, either the label is deceptive or he’s perceiving sweetness from factors other than sweetness.
The wine may very well be low or higher RS, it’s impossible to tell from OP’s perception. Adam has previously perceived certain wines as sweet that others would perceive as bone dry or close to it.
FYI, the same labeling issue exists with “sec” Vouvray. I ran a blind tasting once of eight, and they ranged from tart and bone dry to slightly but noticeably sweet. There was no way of telling from the label. Of course, the dryer ones tasted crappy next to those that were “rounder” and those that were out and out sweet.
So much depends on the acidity and the pH. I’m glad that John points this out. A Mosel wine with, for example, 8 g/l RS, 10 g/l TA, and a pH 3 or under tastes drier than many wines that have barely any residual sugar. He also brings up the point that residually sweet wines tend to give off more aromas than dry wines.
Riesling is “singled out” because that’s the wine the OP is having a problem with. He’s not having problems with other wines that also might have some RS.
The thread springs from Adam’s personal experience trying to find a Riesling he perceives as dry, his disappointment when even supposedly dry Rieslings seem sweet to him, and his frustration that the Riesling labels don’t seem to reflect his experience. He’s not frustrated by other wines with RS currently. This is one person talking about his own experience and frustrations with a particular kind of wine (Riesling), and others jumping in to discuss and advise and theorize. Adam did not start the thread as an academic discussion on the failure of wine labels in general to express the reality of how much sugar is in the bottle.
FWIW, I thought it was a good suggestion (to begin with). The 2017 Palmberg Trocken (at a little over 2 g/l I believe) has very high acidity and is bracingly dry to my palate. It’s still available at retail.
As a Canadian, I buy the Tantalus and Synchromesh offerings often as a great, affordable drinker. The Tantalus base level at $20CAD is hard to beat price/quality wise, and thats saying a lot since Riesling is so inexensive to start with.
The discussion is going into the wrong direction.
I know some Kuentz-Bas wines - and they are almost never tasting “bone dry” - if dry at all.
So it’s not about Adams taste, but about mislabelling by the producer and wrong description by the importer.
DRY legally can go up to 7, even 9 gr/l with apropriate acidity, but these wines never taste bone-dry, and the scale on the label must not be on the far left, period.
The Trimbach that I enjoyed had the perception of being the most austere out of the wines I drank, yet showed these stats: 2.4g/L RS, pH 3.09 and a TA 7.82g/L. The Grosset Polish Hill had 0.9g/L, pH 2.97, TA 7.3 g/l, but felt less austere. Maybe it went through malo and that softened it? Or the slightly lower TA has that effect? It is very interesting in any case.
I thank those who have come with suggestions for low RS Rieslings, I will see if I can find any of them.
Or had more fruit? Or had flavors leaning more toward ripeness? Or had a different ratio of malic / tartaric acids? Or had less phenolic structure that could contribute to the austerity in the Trimbach wine?
Try to cross check with Canada’s LCBO website as it seems to be a reliable source for RS percentages. I went to the Kuntz-Bas site and it didn’t list RS levels.
I absolutely understand where Adam is coming from. While I drink and taste Riesling more widely these days, my introduction to Riesling was pretty much Clare Valley, and I think as a result just about anything from anywhere else seems a little sweet to my palate.
I agree that there is more to it than just the RS level, but because I am a bit bored and don’t have anything better to do at the moment, I got curious and spent some time looking up what some of the Australian Rieslings I regularly drink are. The first thing I found is that it often isn’t reported in the technical specs. Everything I found data for from the Clare Valley was 2g/L or less (as long as it wasn’t listed as off - dry or a sweeter style) and there were certainly a few Eden Valley Reislings below 2g/l as well. The other area I tend to think of as producing really dry Rieslings is Great Southern, in the bottom part of Western Australia, and the little data I found on the RS for those wines bore that out too.
For me, the solution (albeit a difficult one) is drinking Riesling with 15+ years of age. All young Riesling tastes too sweet to me, and too similar to each other. A tasty grape beverage, but not, to me, enough of a wine experience.
You want bones, mineral, slate, maybe earth, with a modest layer of tart fruit on it, you need to wait until the Riesling gets older. That’s where the balance and the magic is, for my palate.
