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Avalon Recommends:
Order the This is the best guide, bar none, to Oregon's wines. Insightful articles, interesting reviews, in depth interviews- you'll find them all here. Worth every penny if you're interested in Oregon wine.
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For a Great White Wine, Try Dry Riesling! by
Cole Danehower Pity the poor Riesling grape, it gets so little respect! Vineyards across Oregon are ripping up or grafting over what little Riesling they may still have. Pity the poor Oregon wine consumer, they have so little good Riesling to drink! Wineries across Oregon who still produce Riesling, too often make it in a high yield, mass production style with too much sweetness and not enough varietal strength. It's a shame that dry Riesling isn't more popular in Oregon. It's fresh and fruity, complements an unusual variety of foods and cuisines, and can be very affordable. It's a great wine! In fact, the greatest wine I ever had was a dry Riesling. It was some years ago when I had a unique opportunity to dine at the premier restaurant in Paris: the famed Alain Ducasse. The menu of the day was a series of successive seafood courses. When the sommelier handed me the wine list-a huge leather bound book with hundreds of wines listed in elegant handwritten script-I was completely intimidated. I asked him for a recommendation and he asked in return "Do you like Riesling?" All the Rieslings I'd ever tried before had been semi-sweet and semi-interesting. Nevertheless, I told him that I did, in fact, favor Riesling. After all, who was I to go against his recommendation? The wine he brought was a revelation. It was from the Alsace region of France, an area that many consider produces some of the world's finest Rieslings (though the Germans might have another point of view!). The straw gold liquid was infused with a fantastic mélange of flavors: green apple, peach, and honeyed apricot, hints of nutmeg and clove, honeysuckle blossom, and an ineffable cool stony character that was irresistible. And with the food . . . well, the Riesling was unparalleled. Its bright, crisp acidity and complex flavors combined with the rich lushness of the different seafood dishes to produce a divine culinary treat. It was my first experience of the true sensory marvel that a great food and wine pairing can deliver. So can you approximate this experience here at home? You bet! To make finding and serving a fabulous Riesling easier,
here are three quick rules: Finding the right Riesling Sometimes a winery will have been kind enough to guide you with words on their label like "dry" (not sweet), "off dry" (slightly sweet), "sweet," and "late harvest" (intensely sweet, and usually reserved for after-dinner sipping). But if those words aren't readily apparent, you'll have to dig a bit deeper. A hint can sometimes be found in the fine print on the wine's label. Look carefully for the words "residual sugar" and a percentage measurement figure. This is an indication of sweetness. Wines with measurements above "0.7%" will taste progressively sweeter, those below will taste dry. For food pairing, the drier Rieslings are what you want. Dry wines tend to have more acidity-especially a hallmark of a good Riesling-which helps bring out the flavors of both the wine and the food. Sweeter wine flavors conflict more readily with many foods and generally don't complement a meal nearly as well as dry. The world of sweet Rieslings is a fascinating and complex one, and worthy of a column unto itself. But if you want to experience the way a good Riesling can wake up a meal, go for the dry version. Another reason Riesling gets little respect is that there are far too many mediocre examples on the market. Many producers treat Riesling casually, making it almost as a bulk wine. Like all good wine grape varieties, Riesling shows its best when it is grown in the right climate, farmed to produce small yields of flavor concentrated grapes, and vinified with care and attention. In short, it pays to pay for good Riesling! On average (there are always exceptions), the cheaper the price, the less you can expect in the overall quality of flavor and texture. That's because it costs less to produce high volumes of average tasting Riesling. Wineries that want to produce the best wines they can, will invest in their Riesling vineyards and focus on craft winemaking that expresses varietal character. They will tend to produce smaller quantities of more richly complex wines. Such Rieslings will certainly cost more, but they will also deliver reams more flavor than their cheap cousins. Buy these wines and you are more likely to be pleased. The good news is that most respectable Rieslings are reasonably priced. Excellent examples of both domestic and imported dry Rieslings, can be purchased for under $25-often well under! It's also wise to buy from reliable Riesling producers. Here are some excellent wineries that have proven their dry Riesling prowess, and whose products can be usually found in Oregon bottle shops: Pacific
Northwest: Once you have your dry Riesling in hand, the next question is what foods to serve it with. Pairing dry Riesling with
food The lively acidity of a good dry Riesling provides an excellent counterpoint to the weighty fullness of creamy or fatty foods. Rich soft and semi-soft cheeses, such as a ripe Brie, a good Alsatian Munster, or Pont l'Evéque are showcased by a sharp Riesling. Seafood and lobster in mayonnaise, cream, or butter-based sauces-as I discovered in Paris-are enlivened and the mouth refreshed by Riesling. Likewise duck and goose, and their foie gras, are excellent matches. You might even try the wine with a thickly-sauced fettucine! Another successful stratagem is to pair dry Riesling with salty foods, thereby matching two kinds of sharpness to produce a pleasurable result. Cheeses like Gruyere, Beaufort, or a mature Asiago are good choices. Fresh juicy oysters or steamed clams in garlic butter just call out for a refreshing Riesling. Also, piquant olives, ham and smoked meats, even salami are some unconventional, but satisfying combinations. And finally, spicy and tangy foods can be surprisingly well paired with a fresh and flavorful Riesling. The wine stands up unusually well to many Asian cuisines-especially dishes where the flavor of a spice, rather than its heat, is predominant. For instance, the exotic tastes of Thai or Vietnamese dishes-especially piquant soups like Tom Yum-can at the same time be complemented by the fresh and flowery fruitiness of a Riesling, and yet also set in contrast by the wine's cool and sharp acidic character. As you experiment for yourself, you'll discover that
dry Riesling offers a wonderful palette of flavors for you to find a favorite
food pairing. And I'm sure along your path of discovery, you'll find the
rewards of Riesling intensely pleasing! |
Past columns by Cole Oregon Wine touring at Thanksgiving Oregon 2001 Harvest- Broadley Vineyards Oregon 2001 Harvest Update part 2 Oregon Wines for Romance The
Best Bets in Is Chardonnay going to become Oregon's Best Wine? Is
Pinot gris Life
Beyond Pinot Noir The
Promise of "Wineterview" The Price of Value and the Value of Price
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