Wine 101: Riesling

Every month or so, I get together for a childless night out with my Best Friend. We always go out for sushi and I always provide the wine. Tonight I think I'll go with an easy-drinking, semi-sweet Riesling. I love it with sushi! The more Riesling I drink, the more I become a fan of it in all its different styles.

Although Riesling is growing exponentially in popularity and is being made in other countries such as France, Australia, New Zealand, Austria and the US, for the purposes of this blog, I'm going to be focusing on German Rieslings.

Riesling is considered to be one of the world's great white wine grapes. It's a native of Germany, where it's believed to have been cultivated for 500, and possibly as long as 2,000, years. Three common characteristics of German Riesling are that they are rarely blended with other varieties, hardly ever exposed to commercial yeast and usually never exposed to oak flavor (although some wine regions have begun to experiment with oak aging).

Although many people have the misconception that Riesling is strictly a sweet wine, Rieslings are made in a variety of styles, ranging from dry to very sweet.

The driest style is called Kabinett. The grapes are picked when they are just fully ripe. They have a light and elegant character, and are generally semi-sweet by default but can also be dry or off-dry.

Spatlese style is made from grapes that have sat on the vine a little longer, and have gotten riper and have a higher amount of sugar. This results, naturally, in a sweeter wine, but still not one you'd break out to have with your chocolate cake.

Auslese is sweeter still, and is sometimes considered to be a dessert wine. Auslesen can be enjoyed as an aperitif, but are usually best accompanied with food, particularly those that exhibit the hearty characteristics of German cuisine.

Then we get to the actual dessert Rieslings: Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese. The grapes used to make these styles have been left on the vine for a much longer period of time, and generally infected with a certain type of fungus called Botrytis cinerea. This is known as noble rot. This produces a fine and intensely sweet, concentrated wine.

If you're looking for a great white wine, pick up a bottle of Riesling the next time you're in the store. It goes great with fish and pork, and can stand up to the bolder flavors of Thai or Chinese cuisine. The sharp acidity/sweetness in Rieslings can serve as a good balance to foods that have a high salt content. In Germany, cabbage is sometimes cooked with riesling to reduce the vegetable's smell. Serve Riesling as you would most other whites - chilled to about 50 degrees.