Monday, April 17, 2017

Varietal View



AT THE SOURCE

How many of you enjoyed a nice Riesling with your Easter dinner?  It’s a food-friendly, moderately priced wine and readily available in your local Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores.  In May, our tasting will be focused on the wines of Dr. Konstantin Frank.  When you think of Finger Lakes wine, most often Riesling comes to mind.  A fifth of all of the wine grapes planted in Germany are Riesling, so to talk about Riesling, you have to start with Germany.  So, we thought that we’d give you a bit of background on this particular grape.

There’s a lot of Riesling planted in Germany, but there's a lot to like. Riesling can taste like peach or apricot, with lime-like tartness. It's also incredibly aromatic, with jasmine and honeysuckle. Even though the scientific evidence is lacking, if you drink a bottle from grapes grown on blue or red slate, you'll swear you can taste through the fruit flavors to the minerals at the wine's core.

If Riesling grapes stay on the vine long enough to be affected by botrytis, called 'noble rot', then the wines will take on flavors of ginger and honey. You won't find much German Riesling aged in oak barrels.  Winemakers prefer to emphasize the freshness of the grape rather than weigh it down with oak. Riesling also ages well. Bottles taste amazing 10, 20, even 30 years after the vintage.

DON'T FEAR THE SUGAR

Not all German Rieslings are sweet, but you shouldn't avoid a Riesling with a little residual sugar. Riesling grapes are naturally very high in acid, and the cool, northern climate of Germany means this acid stays in the grapes even into the fall harvest season. So winemakers let the fermentation stop before the wine is completely dry, retaining a little sweetness in order to balance the wine.

Think of it like this: Have you ever made fresh lemonade? If you taste it and it's too tart, you add some sugar until the flavor is right: plenty tart, with just enough sweetness to soften the edge a little.
That bit of sweetness also makes these Rieslings friendly at the dinner table. Sugar will help moderate spice. Try an off-dry German Riesling with Indian or Thai food. Add something fatty and you'll discover that acidity, sweetness, and richness are great together.

THE PRÄDIKAT SYSTEM

German wine labels can be a bit intimidating. (So many umlauts!) But there's useful information on those labels, so it's worth getting to know a few terms.

Like wine anywhere, Germany's highest quality bottlings come from a specific place. In Germany, that starts with table wine from anywhere in the country.  That's Deutscher Wein. Then there's Landwein, which is from broad geographic areas within the country, a bit like Vin de Pays in France or Indicazione Geografica Tipica in Italy.

Above those two, there are two categories: Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (Quality wine from a certain wine region) and Prädikatswein, which will also have the specific region listed. Prädikatswein is the highest level for wine classification and must be labeled by Prädikat. A note on the bottle tells you about the ripeness level of the grapes before they were made into wine. As the grapes get riper, they pack in more sugar and more intensity of flavor.

The levels in the Prädikat system can give you an idea of how sweet the wine will be. The more ripe the grapes are, the more sugar they have before fermentation, and the more likely there will be some sugar left over when the fermentation stops. This leftover sugar is called 'residual sugar'.

(Prädikat isn't a perfect predictor of sweetness, though. More on the exceptions later.)

Kabinett is the least ripe and wines in this category are usually light and fresh. Grapes for Spätlese wines were left on the vine a little longer to get more sugar, and the resulting wine is likely to be more powerful and rich, plus sweeter than the Kabinett. Auslese wines are even sweeter, and are made from riper grapes than Spätlese. These wines age very well, though they're also excellent accompaniments to a cheese plate.

For a sweet wine for after dinner look for Beerenauslese or Trockenbeerenauslese. Those are the sweet wines.  Trocken means 'dry,' but in Trockenbeerenauslese, the term refers to the dried berries on the vine rather than the wine. These sweet wines are made with late-harvest grapes attacked by botrytis or 'noble rot', the same fungus that makes the renowned wines of Sauternes.

Finally, grapes for Eiswein (Ice wine) are picked and pressed in winter when they are frozen. Freezing concentrates the sweet grape juice, and these wines tend to be the sweetest, and most expensive.

HOW DO YOU KNOW HOW SWEET THE WINE IS?

If you’re at the Fine Wine and Good Spirits store, and staring at the wall of German Riesling, how do you know if you are getting something bone dry, off-dry, or made for dessert?

It would be nice if it could be as simple as always paying attention to the ripeness levels noted by the Prädikat categories above. But sometimes winemakers will decide to take a wine made from Spätlese-level ripe grapes and call it a Kabinett.

Here's a handy trick. Look at the alcohol percentage. The lower the alcohol, the sweeter the wine will be. This is because not all the sugar has been converted to alcohol through fermentation. Is the ABV 8%? Then it's going to be on the sweeter side. Is the alcohol at 13%? That should be pretty dry.
There are a couple more German words that are worth learning to help you determine sweetness.
If you see Trocken on the label that means it's dry. (This is true even if there's also a Spätlese on the bottle. that term refers to ripeness, and the Trocken is the final word on dryness.)

Halbtrocken is off-dry. These are perfect for that Thai or Indian dinner. If you see Selection on the bottle, that wine will be dry (and sourced from a single vineyard) while a wine labeled Classic is off-dry, like Halbtrocken.

A wine labeled with 'GG' will also be dry. This is short for Grosses Gewächs ("Great Growth"). This means that grapes from a very good vineyard site were used to make a dry wine. These great sites are a bit like a 'Grand Cru' vineyards in Burgundy. These wines will generally be more expensive than bottles labeled 'Trocken' or 'Selection,' but will also be powerful and complex.

If you’re still not sure if a wine is dry or sweet? The International Riesling Foundation (yes, such a thing exists) has created a scale of sweetness that you might see on the back of Riesling bottles.

MORE LABEL HINTS

Many German wine bottles will bear a picture of an eagle (adler) with a cluster of grapes, indicating membership in the Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (Association of German Prädikat Wineries), abbreviated as the VDP. This organization was formed to promote quality wine in Germany by requiring its members to adhere to strict guidelines. Plenty of great producers have chosen to opt out of VDP membership, though.

There's another thing to look for when you're scanning labels that I learned at our most recent tasting. Joe and Ruth Barsotti suggested that, if you're not familiar with the winemaker, check the back of the bottle to find out who imported the wine. There are many great importers who have all built impressive portfolios of some of the most renowned estates in Germany.

SINGLE VINEYARDS

It’s difficult to ripen grapes in the cool climate of Germany, but generations of winemakers (there have been vines planted in Germany since Roman times) have found spots for remarkable vineyards. Some of the best sites are along rivers, such as the Mosel and the Rhine, because the steep south-facing slopes get maximum sun.

Single vineyards appear on German wine labels with the name of the town ending in 'er' preceding the vineyard name. Ürziger Würzgarten is the Würzgarten vineyard in the town of Ürzig, for example. Many winemakers make wines from each vineyard. Each producer owns just a segment of the vineyard, and may farm his parcel of vines alongside a dozen neighbors.

Check the blog often for more tips, news, and notices



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