Feature Article : Riesling -- Kinda Crazy

Newsletter Archives > Wine Industry

Riesling: Kinda Crazy


	Whole cluster pressing prior to a long, cool fermentation in stainless steel with several yeasts
	Photo credit: Basil Childers

Call me crazy-looking at white wines when there's pinot noir fever in Oregon-grafting and planting riesling when everyone else is pulling it out-planning to increase fine dry riesling production five-fold over the next five years.

Chehalem is engaged in a Don Quixote-like attempt to resuscitate riesling in our great cool climate, as a variety that is underappreciated and yet as elegantly reflective of site and climate, as a white variety, as pinot noir is as a red.


	Grafting Chardonnay to Riesling at the top of Corral Creek Vineyard
	Photo credit: Michael Davies

Our Plans are to plant riesling vines on Ribbon Ridge in the next two years, having grafted Corral Creek and Ridgecrest chardonnay vines to riesling this spring, supplementing grafted Stoller vines which bore for the first time in 2002. Even before Ribbon Ridge plantings, we will show a five-fold increase to 5.5 acres from the original Corral Creek's 1.1 acres. We are seeking more complexity by planting varied sites.

Our current goal is to excite people, to raise riesling once again to the serious level it was born to. With Oregon's industry paralleling consumers' tendencies, we will try to reverse a riesling production that saw 22% of grapes grown twenty years ago become 5% today. We will commit time and energy to that excitement. Plus 1000 cases of wine to guarantee we can reach most consumers.

The task is not easy, since riesling is not only not red, but it is a variety most people have had early in wine appreciation and skimmed over because of misguided instruction and the unfortunate dexterity of riesling to make a range of styles, including vapid, cheap and sweet. And, after all, serious wine is red, expensive and bone dry, right? Most venerated wine sages insist riesling is not only a noble white variety, it is the noble white variety.

Riesling is a dancer, the female athlete, a Mia Hamm. It is the lithely elegant Audrey Hepburn or firmly aristocratic Katherine Hepburn—so recently even more elevated—borne of strength, glazed with a patina of softness and charm. And, like the world of grace, manners, reserve and contemplation, riesling has been neglected, almost forgot. Riesling has deferred to a competition of wines made in macho proportions, wines on steroids like oak and alcohol and extract.

The 2001 German riesling vintage has done yeoman's work in waking consumers to the magic and delicious richness and complexity of the variety. A stellar vintage that seems to be followed by another in 2002 and has company in Alsace's 2000 vintage, 2001 Germans are worth seeking out.

Germany is not the only place for great riesling. There is a chorus of great wines coming from Alsace (usually dry but sometimes with a lush, low level of RS—residual sugar), Austria (normally dry-styled, but with great late harvests, and accompanying their other great white, Grüner Veltliner), Australia (especially Clare Valley), New Zealand, Canada (Okanagan Valley—oh my, real icewines!—and Ontario) and America (including Washington State, like Eroica, the joint project between Chateau Ste Michelle and Dr. Loosen; New York State, Finger Lakes makers like Hermann Wiemer; California, like our friends at Navarro; and one or two friends and ourselves—humbly—in Oregon). Don't be surprised if you see a collective educational effort bridging regions and countries.

Although riesling grows well in several different cool growing regions, it doesn't hold that all regions' wines are the same in character. Fragrant, bright and highly focused wines are just as possible as heavy, bruised-fruited sweet wines. Riesling, like pinot noir in the red wine world, responds to site and soil better than any other white variety, reflecting in the finished wine differences in soils-like slate, loss, ocean sediment, volcanic or gravel. Wines can be round or angular, fruity or floral, acidic or soft, laser dry or sticky sweet, and mineral or unctuous in style.

Your job in this groundswell should include assembling some great riesling to see what all the fuss is about, including the standard bearers from Germany and Alsace, and the pretenders to the throne like Chehalem and other regional rieslings. And then see what you like.

Chehalem's dry riesling is indeed on the dry side, with threshold-or-less sugar remaining (<0.6%) and with a style that accentuates bright acidity or low pH, and fresh white fruits and flowers, balanced with stony minerality. It may be described as a cross between the fresh and racy German rieslings and the weighty, more alcoholic Alsace rieslings. We are beginning to learn our sites, with the three soils on our estate vineyards offering variety and the warmer sites like Stoller providing lushness, while progressively cooler sites from Corral Creek to Ridgecrest permitting longer hangtimes for complexity and retention of higher acidities. Clonal plant differences will be interesting to play with as we go forward.


	Mike hands the camera a Riesling cluster showing 20% botrytis
	Photo credit: Basil Childers

Winemaking decisions for us include late harvesting, with even a bit of botrytis, most years meaning a November harvest, 120-140 days after bloom. Our yields we try to keep between two to three tons per acre (very low for riesling), with whole cluster pressing and cool stainless ferments for elegance and to minimize harshness, and with multiple yeasts for complexity.

It is the range of wines possible with riesling, plus their utter finesse and food friendliness, that cause experts like Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson and Steve Pitcher to call rieslings "the finest of all white grapes" or "the easiest wines on earth to enjoy.also the hardest to understand." Once we forget we had riesling as introduction to our simple beginnings, we can realize how ultimately engaging intellectually these wines can be.

After all, riesling is a noble variety and its nobility needs to be defended. And I don't personally mind the characterization of a looney astride a mule tilting at windmills, wishing acquaintances richer futures graffitied with fewer sound bites, fast food joints, stock answers, stock cars and stock markets and, instead, simply decorated with more NPR, thoughtfulness, family meals, hybrid cars and farmers markets.

After all, life and its appreciation should be more of a dance than a hockey match.

a;ldkfjsalkjdfsl;kfdj

a;lkjdfal;skjflasfkjasldkfj