German Riesling's Dual Delights

German Riesling's Dual Delights

LIFE, FOR GERMAN Riesling growers, should be one long hurrah. The world is moving away from obvious oak and high alcohol; and ‘minerality’ is the most popular word in the contemporary wine lexicon.

All these things should have the Riesling growers of the mosel and Rheingau, Pfalz, Rheinhessen and everywhere else bouncing out of bed each morning with cries of joy. And actually, they often do. The cries of joy might be a little muted because, being farmers, they never quite trust good news. But fashion has swung hard in their direction. And for once the climate is on their side.

The upshot is that there is a new wine style for Brits to get to grips with. New to us, that is. German Riesling can be off-dry, in the traditional way, or it can be bone dry. Germans have valued their dry Rieslings for years, but the British wine trade, normally able to spark interest among consumers in any new wine, finds dry German Riesling a tough sell.

The usual reason (and i can’t think of any other, so we’ll stick with it) is that sweet Liebfraumilch and its like destroyed the reputation of all German wines. But good grief, worse sins than that have been forgiven by another generation. Think of platform shoes!

While we’ve been looking the other way, Riesling has been evolving: getting drier, riper and more precise. Climate change is taking German Riesling into its comfort zone, and dry wines that used to be a speciality only of more southerly regions like Baden or the Pfalz, and then the Rheingau, are now made in the mosel. And successfully, too.

Even 10 years ago, wines with residual sugar comprised about 60% of production in Germany; now that’s down to about 30%. The better dry Rieslings get, the more people want them; and the more conditions favour dry wines, the more growers want to make them.

Balancing act