Riesling: The World’s Most Noble Grape From Farmy
Riesling is the most versatile wine around the globe. It comes in a wide array of styles, pairs excellently with all cuisines, and a real pleasure to sip. Its flavour and aroma reflect a genuine, unique terroir of its vineyards.
What is Riesling?
Riesling is one of the world’s most popular white wines. It originates in Germany, mostly the regions of Mosel, Rheingau, and Pfalz. It’s also widely cultivated in Alsace, an area that was once part of Germany but now in France. Today, it’s grown in other countries for mass production, including Germany and the United States. It’s the most collectable white in wine repertoires of top connoisseurs.
While it makes some of the world’s sweetest wines, other qualities make it a highly sort after grape. With a spectrum ranging from nectar-sweet to bone dry, it’s a standard wine in every palate. It’s aromatic with grapes that display flowery and perfumed aromas. Its highly acidic grapes usually make sweet, semi-sweet, dry, and semi-dry sparkling whites. Its varieties are highly terroir-expressive and rank among the top three best white wines quality-wise, just behind Sauvignon blanc and Chardonnay. The term terroir-expressive refers to the ability to show a sense of place of origin.
Wine enthusiasts often consider Riesling as the wine of medieval times. It has a long history and first recorded in estate books in 1446. According to DNA fingerprinting, it originated in Rhine River in Germany as a natural derivative of a French grape, which is the grandmother to most of the famous vines, such as Petit Verdot and Chardonnay. Today, the best vines grow along the Mosel River on steep, slate rocks.
Its varying flavours and high acidity make it suitable for extended ageing. The ageing periods depend on the level of dryness and sweetness expected. For example, the sweet versions take 10-30 years, semi-sweet 10-20 years, and dry versions 5-10 years. Interestingly, experts found the wine still enjoyable after 100 years of ageing, a rare phenomenon with typical grapes.
What’s the Taste of Riesling?
It’s tasting begins with intense floral aromas when crisp and ice cold. The aromatic grape offers fruity aromas of orchard fruits like peach, apple, apricot, and nectarine. Besides floral notes, it smells things like lime peel, jasmine, or honeycomb. Also, some people define its smell as a striking aroma of diesel, petroleum wax, or petrol. This minerality often depends on climate and soil quality. It also has high acidity levels similar to that of lemonade, while still on the palate. Riesling has excellent ageing capabilities due to its high sugar content and extreme acidity. Ageing for a decade or more transforms it into a completely new wine with complex notes of nuts, wax, ginger, honey, or even mushroom.
Where Does Riesling Grow?
Germany is the leading country with the most vines. The vineyards stretch across the 13 growing regions of Germany, with Mosel and Pfalz being the leading producers. The German grapes are low alcohol, often ranging from 8-9%. Both sweet and dry variations have a tingling acidity and a delicate touch of sweetness.
The grapes also grow in Sunny Alsace, a French region that lies along the German border. Though the Alsace grapes possess a more robust mouthfeel, they often come across as drier and limited to the citrus spectrum of fruit flavours. They make excellent sweet and dry styles but characterised as one with more distinct minerality compared to the German varieties. Australia and the United States are also significant producers, firmly behind Germany.
Riesling grows best in steep terrain that projects the vines to direct sunlight. They thrive better in cold climates with rocky, but well-drained soils. They are early-ripening grapes, and when subjected to hot climates, they quickly become overripe. However, the late-ripening variety tends to do better in warmer climates, particularly in Alsace and some regions of Austria. This variety develops more distinctive peach and citrus when compared to the early-ripening Riesling.
Red Riesling is a rare cloned version of Riesling that gained popularity in recent years. It’s red-skinned and displays minimal variation in flavour and aroma when compared to the normal Rieslings. Its commercial cultivation started in Germany in 2006, and wine-growers continue to increase its population annually. The clone propagates from vines in specific designations to ensure uniformity of genetic make-up and characteristics.
Riesling and Food Pairing
Riesling’s versatility makes it the ultimate food-pairing wine. It gives options for every cuisine, thanks to its sweetness and high acidity levels, which balance excellently with almost every dish. They are the best choice for most spicy foods and well-suited for classic recipes of fish, poultry meat, beef, and pork. Most medium Rieslings pair well with rich, spicy Asian, Chinese, and Indian dishes. They can also feature in any food with fresh fruits. Seductively sweet Rieslings make a beautiful combination with fruit desserts, salads, cream sauces, and salty blue cheeses.
Rieslings should serve at low temperatures with a crisp finish on the glass. When pairing with meat, consider white meats such as chicken and turkey. The same applies to seafood, such as shrimp and crabs. For vegetables, the ones with high sugar content, such as eggplant, carrots, and corn, pair best as they balance the wine’s acidity with sweetness. Mild cheeses make the best combination as “stinky” cheese overpowers the delicate, subtle fruit flavours.
Though the majority of people think of Rieslings as sweet, dry vintages mostly from Germany make an excellent addition to wine cellars. Most people shop for sweet bottles only to satisfy their sweet tooth, but for wine connoisseurs, dry Rieslings are another superb option. The dry versions come in different varieties, can age for over a decade, and display complex flavours. Unlike in the United States, where wine lovers expect all wines to be sweet, most Europeans are aware of dry Riesling mostly marketed under the name “trocken.”