Wine Trail in the Ahr Valley

6th July 2020 | Cork Talk | 8 minute read

The Reasons to Choose Riesling

By Virgin Wines

Riesling is widely regarded by wine enthusiasts and experts as one of the wonders of the vinous world. For those of you who have never tried Riesling, you are about to be let in to one of the wine world’s biggest secrets; Riesling totally rocks.

Its natural home is Germany, where it makes some of the most thrilling wines on the planet. It’s the variety where mouth-tingling freshness meets sublime fruit flavours, from citrus through to stone fruits and even luscious tropical fruit. These wines are somehow heady and sensuous, yet elegant and restrained, all at the same time.

The slowly-but-surely growing consumer resistance to heavily oaked, chunky wines might well be the turning point for Riesling. Grown to its strengths, it’s the stylistic antithesis. The naturally vibrant and well-defined apple and lime fruit typical in Riesling doesn’t marry well with the tannin and spice imparted by small oak barriques, and so you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Riesling where the oak dominates its aromatics.

Riesling is also a variety that effortlessly displays the characteristics of its origin. Known as terroir, the unique character given to a wine by the soil, vines and micro-climate of a vineyard, this is a very desirable trait in the current UK market where consumers are more and more knowledgeable and appreciate the uniqueness and provenance of a wine more than ever before.

There’s no better way to explore terroir than to take two wines of the same grape variety but from different regions and taste side-by-side. Take the Thomas Losen Edition Riesling On Slate and the Hiestand Asia de Cuba Riesling, for example. The Thomas Losen is from steep, slate-rich soils on the banks of the Mosel River. The steep gradient means the rain runs straight off with the only moisture available to the vines deep into the mineral-rich soil where the vine’s roots have to go to survive. On the other hand, the Asia de Cuba’s Riesling vineyards sit on the flats of Rheinhessen where water availability is much less of an issue and the temperature is warmer, so the wines tend to be rounder, riper and fruitier than the more mineral and serious Mosel Rieslings.

Riesling’s other major string to its bow is its ability to age. Its naturally high acidity and high levels of extract (all the good stuff – minerals, flavour, etc.) give the wine everything it needs to develop in bottle for years and even decades with minimal risk of spoilage. The evolution of Riesling is fascinating. From searing, primary green apple and citrus when young, to dark honey and marmalade when mature, with paraffin and flint anywhere in between. Hans Lang’s lusciously sweet Beerenauslese is a great example, already with nearly ten years bottle age and starting to show those enticing marmalade notes, but with decades of potential ageing left. These are some of the best wines in the world to lay down, it’s worth putting a case or two away, taste once every few years and see for yourself how it develops over time.

Sweetness (or more accurately, ripeness at harvest) is a factor in the diversity of Riesling wines too. Germany’s ‘Pradikatswein’ system classifies the grapes into ripeness levels come harvest time. It’s the natural racy acidity of Riesling that allows this to be possible as any residual sugars must be accompanied by high levels of acidity to give balance to the palate.

For those with a sweet tooth, you’ll find ‘Trockenbeerenauslese’ at the top of this system. These bunches are left beyond ‘optimum’ ripeness and the individual berries hand selected from the bunch so only those in perfect condition get through. Given the process, you won’t be surprised to hear these aren’t the cheapest wines on the market, but the high sugar and acid levels give these wines the potential to age for many decades. Heinrichshof make an absolute gem which is well worth a look.