Sound Riesling

Riesling is the wine that a lot of people love to hate. In fact, many of my wine tour clients from overseas produce garlic and crucifixes at the very mention of the word and have to be seriously talked into trying one of ours.

(By the way, it’s pronounced Rees-ling. Not Rise-ling. It’s a German grape and that’s how they say the ‘ie’ sound. Same as in Diesel.

The blame goes way back to some pretty awful sugary sweet style Rieslings from the 1970s and early 1980s: wines like Blue Nun Liebfraumilch and Black Tower. These were cheap, mass-produced wines in quirky bottles which caught the imagination of newbie wine drinkers and for many years thereafter branded Riesling as a god-awful sweet wine to be avoided.

Here in New Zealand, as in Australia we tend toward the dry end of the spectrum, producing wines that are crisp, fruity and dry or just slightly sweet (off-dry).

And that’s not to say that Riesling can’t shine as a sweet style when the grapes are left on the vine till they are extremely ripe and full of
natural fructose sugar. Taken to extreme, these wines are called Late Harvest (very ripe and shrivelled) or Noble Riesling (affected by a fungus called Botrytis, which sucks out the water content and leaves very sweet concentrated juice with a honeyed taste).
In fact, I’m a big fan of the new wave of sweeter Rieslings – where the true nature of the grape is revealed as a luscious, fruity wine with honey, lime and apricot flavours, plus good cellaring potential.

Here’s a selection:

WAIMEA ESTATES Nelson Riesling
Just a smidgen off dry, with Granny Smith apple and flinty flavours.

MUDDY WATER James Hardwick Riesling
Great wine – full flavoured medium style Riesling, complex palate for a young wine, with flavours of crisp lime, prince melon and honey. Yum.

WEST BROOK Riesling Marlborough Crisp and citrussy. Lemon squash and Granny Smith apple aromas, fruity flavours. Picked up a Gold at the Air NZ Wine Awards 2004.

WEST BROOK Blue Ridge Late Harvest Riesling Marlborough
146 grams per litre of residual sugar. Aged in new oak. Botrytis influenced – with honey, apricots and fresh citrus on the palate. Yum.

MUDDY WATER Riesling ‘Unplugged’
Sweet Riesling with flavours of honey, sultanas and lime, with crisp and tangy acidity.



Phil Parker operates Auckland Fine Wine Tours and is a wine writer.

www.insidertouring.co.nz