I really don’t have a good handle on German Riesling and I’d like some help with that. I drink it occasionally, usually from well respected producers (Prum, Willi Schaefer, Clemens Busch, etc), and enjoy it very much, but I don’t really understand what I’m drinking the way I do with other wines.
I’ve read that Riesling is one of the best varieties to transmit terroir. I’d like to think that I can taste that, but if I’m being honest, to me it all tastes like “German Riesling”. I’ve noticed that Riesling from Germany, US, Australia do taste different, so I do believe in the whole terroir-transparency thing. But how do I learn to appreciate that better?
I was thinking of choosing one producer and getting a few bottlings from different vineyard sites, ideally of the same Pradikat level and vintage. Is this the best way to do it? If so, what producer, what vintage, what sites? I was thinking 2019 Spatlese…but idk!
The fact that top-quality Riesling costs much less than the best wines from most other great regions is a bonus. The fact that it’s turning out to be a real hot sweaty summer here in New England is another bonus (this isn’t Napa Cab weather!).
Apologies for the very general question but I’d love to hear whatever thoughts you have.
german riesling is in my experience extremely vintage, producer AND site sensitive. if you want to gain understanding, i would narrow scope severely.
i’d probably start with specific regions, isolating for vintage and pradikat. if you can isolate for vineyard, great, but vintage and pradikat will tell you quite a bit about both producer style and regional profile.
dry wines are a great way to evaluate terroir and regional style but the level of proficiency is more varied here in my opinion as there are many grand cru, three michelin star estates that worked in the off-dry paradigm for generations.
at the moment there is renewed appreciation for the kabinetts of old - off-dry but stridently acidic wines that are very edgy and scintillating sensory experiences. you can explore the range between feinherb (sub kabinett) and kabinett trocken for a more compact variety of styles that keep both fruitiness and opulence at bay.
each german region has a pretty distinct wine profile i would say. i would say that they become hard to mistake for each other after you have some experience, so you might eventually land on particular areas or producers that really work for you.
i’ll leave the producer recommendations to others, but gosh, there are a FUCKTON of good ones.
It’s the same with all wine, the main variables are vintage, producer, grape and geography. If you want to get a handle on any one of those variables, you need to hold everything else constant and vary the others.
It can be daunting because there is so much out there to drink/explore, but you have to get started somewhere! Things go more quickly if you can assemble a group who is interested in opening lots of bottles, where you can vary a few dimensions.
I agree that you might get a quicker sense of terroir from the dry wines, because sugar has a way of covering things. But you can also find terroir differences in the off-dry wines.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on specific producer recommendations, people are just going to start listing their favorite wines, which may or may not be yours, and may or may not be easily available to you.
As far as “understanding” what you’re drinking, I think many of us believe that comes best when you visit the region, speak with producers, understand the culture, etc. But that can take time.
In the short run, since you’re on the East Coast, try to attend one of @Robert_Dentice 's fabulous Riesling Study events!
Others will disagree, but my answer to this question is that you’re drinking the wines young. At 15+ years from the vintage give or take, the terroir and overall “wine experience” really emerge from under the “tasty grape beverage” profile they have when young.
It’s harder to source older rieslings, but if you can try a few, you can see what I’m saying and decide if you want to invest in aging them. One other benefit is they age very reliably, including without optimal storage conditions. Very low risk of premox and other flaws.
One other ‘tip’ is that it sounds like you’ve been focused on the off-dry wines of the Mosel. But Germany is a big place and those are a relatively niche subset.
It could be that you love those wines and want to do a terroir deep-dive on their nuances. But you also might consider getting Rieslings from across the country (Mosel, Saar, Ruwer, Nahe, Rheingau, Pfalz, Franken, Rheinhessen, Baden, Württemberg etc) and first focusing on broad regional differences (or then villages) before getting to vineyards.
Of course everything is complicated and difficult. But at least the journey is fun!
I love German wines. I find that in many cases, the differences between site characteristics for most producers are pretty subtle, but that is because the wines tend to be from the same villages or a nearby villages. I think the best way to see site differences (although from different producers) would be to have a wine from the Saar, the Middle Mosel, the Nahe and the Rheingau. When you get wines from different regions, the site differences become more distinct.
Some wines from one region and one producer where I do find site differences to be more distinct are:
Selbach Zeltinger Sonnenuhr vs. Zeltinger Schlossberg
Maximin Grunhauser Abtsberg vs. Herrenberg
Reinhold Haart Piesporter Goldtropfchen vs. Wntricher Ohligsberg
I would stick with Kabinetts or at most Spatlese as when you get to Auslese and above there are too many other things going on.
I think there are 3 approaches you can take, and it doesn’t hurt to do them all at once.
1 – Global. Compare dry wines from classic places around the world: Nahe/Rheingau/Rheinhessen/Mosel, Austria, Alsace, Clare/Eden, Finger Lakes. Do this repeatedly, including different places and producers, until you start to notice semi-consistent differences in character. It can be difficult to differentiate Finger Lakes vs. Germany or Alsace vs. Pfalz (which is why I didn’t include Pfalz for this section), but there are general similarities within places and differences between them that should pop up most of the time.
2 – Regional within Germany. In my opinion, Germany is by far the best country to notice regional differences. Clare vs. Eden or Kampal vs. Wachau are not always obviously identifiable (I realize Wachau sometimes is, but we don’t need to get bogged down in that yet). With a similar Pradikat or sweetness level (Grosses Gewachs or Kabinett, for example – I agree with Howard about avoiding Auslese and up), there are general characteristics that you’ll start to notice by comparing the major regions. Rheinhessen vs. Nahe might not always be obvious, but in general, each major region does have its own personality. It helps a lot of you have the same vintage for every wine in a pair or flight.
3 – Individual vineyard site. You can do this with specific producers. As in other categories, it helps to have high quality wines. Forge, Donnhoff, JJ Prum, Willi Schaefer, Selbach, Leitz (if you can find them these days), Seehof, Burklin Wolf, Brundlmayer, Gobelsburg, Alzinger, etc. etc. Bonus points if you can get 2-3 wines with 2 vintages of each. This is not so much to understand each vineyard on its own (although that can come with enough experience), but rather to see how different vineyards can be within a region.
Don’t overthink it. I always joke no one bites into a mango and says this tastes like a 2015 JJ Prum WS Auslese Long Gold Capsule. Saying a wine tastes like riesling is not a bad thing.
If you want to do a very geeky experiment Clemens Busch has vineyards that have blue, grey and red slate and he bottles them separately. It is fun to try them all next to each other. But be forewarned the differences are subtle.
As usual when it comes to Riesling, Robert has nailed it. There’s no reason to take any different approach to learning about Riesling than you have to learning about any other region you believe you have successfully grasped. The only difference in approach might be that, because it’s easier to get a wide range of Riesling as almost nothing is terribly expensive, and many well known producers are widely available, sourcing isn’t a real impediment. If you like doing intellectual comparisons, do lots of them - there’s no good vs bad place to start, no one kind if cinoarison that is going to be better, more informative or more fun than any other. Be guided by what you can find and what you have liked in the past. Drink a lot, read a lot, take notes or don’t, think about what you’ve drunk, and don’t give a hoot if what you taste or perceive isn’t what you think you should, based on what others say.
And if you never feel like you “now understand Riesling” there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve arguably drunk more Riesling than the great majority of wine drinkers, and doubt my pleasure is much greater because I could now possibly call a few vineyards or producers blind.
One of the many reasons I love California is that the smell of orange blossoms and jasmine reminds me so much of riesling! I love LA in the spring and early summer!
If you want to try an experiment with young wines I might suggest getting Feinherb or Halbtrocken (or just Trocken if you happen to like the dry wines) bottlings in order to minimize the effects of the youthful residual sugar. That could give you a better view to the underlying differences. Trying a Mosel (e.g., Selbach Oster Zeltinger Himmelreich Kabinett Halbtrocken) against a not too sweet Rheinhessen wine (e.g., Gunderloch Jean Baptiste) could be an interesting comparison.
You have given a lot of great advice on this board over the years, but “Don’t overthink it” might be the best yet. Would apply to all wines and wine regions. I agree, just have fun.
Terroir is definitely real, but among wines with noticeable residual sugar (halbtrocken and up) sugar and acid levels vary hugely producer to producer, and bottllng to bottling, and those will likely be the things that most strike you at first, not the site character.
As Howard said, when you get to Auslese and higher, and even some Spatleses, botrytis becomes a significant factor that masks the terroir element.
Residual sugar brings out the unique aromas of riesling. Tasting a dry riesling blindly, regardless of where it’s from, it can be very hard to identify the grape. When there’s some residual sugar (even halbtrockens), though, the grape is hard to miss.
If you want to explore geography at a broad level, taste wines from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer (yes, I know that that’s no longer an authorized designation) against those from along the Rhine, or from the Nahe (Donnhoff). The Mosel region is cooler, and the fruit flavors lean more toward apple and pear, while the Rhine wines more often show peach and apricot (though these are broad generalizations and can vary with vintage). The Nahe wines have their own (to me) earthier profile.
Wines from the Ruwer (Max. Grunhaus, Karthauserhof) and Saar (von Hovel, Egon Muller), which are tributaries of the Mosel, tend to have higher acid levels because those valleys are cooler than the Middle Mosel (Prum, Schaeffer). I can often peg them tasting blindly because the acid is so conspicuous, even in the upper Pradikats.
I’m wondering if this apply generally for others as well?
The very few occasions I’ve been blinded on dry Riesling the first variety that came to mind has been, Riesling. I’m far from a great blind taster, most often humbled…
Definitely not for me. I taste hundreds of wines per year blind, and Riesling tends to be the most obvious variety, no matter the sugar level. They don’t necessarily smell the same, ie. sweet Riesling smells like sweet Riesling and dry smells like dry, but to me, both are super obvious. Identifying a dry Riesling as a Riesling usually takes about a few seconds.
This is very far from my experience, both personally in blind tastings, and seeing many, many other people frequently identify the grape on Dry Rieslings.
estates that worked in the off-dry paradigm for generations.