Give Riesling a chance!
It’s time to put to bed the myth that Riesling is a sweet, cheap wine from Germany and realise that this beautiful grape can deliver some of the most exquisite wine right across the dry to sweet spectrum when in the hands of a talented winemaker.
The reputation that Riesling has (through no fault of its own) gathered here in the UK is one of intensely sweet, unstructured wines that end up in the back of the garden shed collecting dust having been brought back from a trip to Germany. This was definitely the case when I was a youngster, my father having worked in Germany, we ended up moving an old dusty bottle of Black Tower from house to house over the years. Before it finally smashed - whoops!
Riesling from Germany, especially in the Mosel, however can be a thing of beauty. Using a ripeness scale (for ripeness, read sweetness) from Trocken through to Trockenbeerenauslese, with a few twists and turns along the way, there are opportunities to see how this wonderful grape can develop from a crisp, refreshing dry wine, all the way to a thick, viscously sweet dessert wine when left on the vine for long enough.
The Alsace and Austria also produce some Rieslings of excellent quality and more delicious expressions of this grape can be found as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and the U.S and Canada, where varying climates produce uniquely distinct wines with a real sense of place.
We have been tasting Riesling, Bio Bio, Nostros Reserva, Indomia Bio Bio Valley, Chile 2018. A beautiful pale green colour, intense lime and lemon aromas with a hint of flora, refreshing and zesty on the palate.
This is great, refreshing wine from the cool climate valley of Bio Bio in southern Chile, where longer growing seasons allow the grape to develop more aromatic flavours and fruit characteristics, very much expressive of the soil and situation.
We highly recommend this wine as a food pairing with fish and chicken as well as vegetarian dishes, that don’t have a rich creamy sauce. Try it alongside our Sardinian Fish Stew and you won’t be dissappointed.
