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Feature Article
While many wine consumers still associate Riesling with a sea of simple sugary wines exported to North America in the 1970s, savvy connoisseurs are snapping up terrific terroir-driven Rieslings from cool climates like Michigan.
Riesling Rebirth: a new beginning in North America for a noble grape
One of the world’s greatest grape varieties would be a huge success with American wine consumers, if only winemakers had the confidence to plant more of it.
by
Dan Berger
November 8, 2006
Around the turn of the last century, the auction houses in London were as active in selling wine as today. And the most in-demand wines of the day were not exalted Bordeaux, esoteric Burgundy, or even dessert wines like Château d’Yquem.
No, 100 years ago, the hottest wines in the eyes of collectors were from the coolest growing region in Europe, where the sun shines on vines at such a steep angle that the best vineyards face south. Germany’s prized grape, Riesling, made those esteemed wines, and the surprise is that the wines were not only Trockenbeerenauslese, the ultrasweet wines that have long been the target of wealthy collectors.
Some of the most expensive wines were dry. Some were off-dry. Some were only slightly sweet.
Hock, as it was called, was a wine rated as incomparable. Prices for them were high. Beyond that, each of Germany’s wine regions yielded a distinctly different aromatic taste sensation, proving conclusively in that low-tech era that the site on which the grapes grew dictated as much, if not more of the character of the resulting wine than did the variety.
Of the thousands of grape varieties around the world that are used to make table wines, only a dozen or more are considered classics. Some believe Riesling to be the greatest grape of all.
But when a wine goes out of favor with the masses, often the grape that makes it wanes and withers and soon is abandoned. Since Riesling hasn’t been on the radar screen of most American wine consumers since perhaps the early 1970s, many Cabernet-aholics, Zin-freaks, and Pinot-philes might consider it quaint. And thus many growers have all but forsaken it, despite critical acclaim from a few esotericists who cling to the variety.
But sales figures don’t lie. In various assessments, from anecdotal evidence to supermarket scanner data, it is clear that, despite no klieg-light attention from the glossy magazines and no stratospheric scores from singular wine critics, Riesling never really died, and it is now quickly racing back into many Americans’ consciousness.
U.S. supermarket scanner data shows that U.S. Riesling sales have shot up 172% in 2005 over the prior year.
Still, Riesling’s rise from a smallish base makes its rebirth a rather surreptitious one. Some supposedly savvy wine people don’t know of Riesling’s resurgence. They still think it is a quaint notion that anyone who calls himself a wine lover would actually consume Riesling. But the story, as Lewis Carroll might say, gets curiouser and curiouser.
In 2003, as I was going gaga over the 2001 German Rieslings and writing nirvana-esque commentaries about them, I began to do a little self-serving research. I went into and called literally two dozen wine shops to see what Rieslings they carried. I was looking to buy quality wines cheaply since most retailers had ordered them when the euro was standing at about 88 cents, and by the time I was looking, the Euro was already well over $1.10. I was bargain shopping, assuming (rightly) that few would have been re-priced upward.
And what I learned was very strange and nothing like anything I had ever encountered. Few wine shops had any Rieslings at all! Despite the fact that the 2001 German vintage was widely known to be absolutely classic, most shop personnel said they had no call for Riesling, and they were proud of their high-end Chardonnays and Viogniers. From the sound of it, Riesling had died sans obituary.
Yet at a handful of shops -- no more than six or seven -- operated by savvier people, Riesling sales were going nuts. In general, these were large wine shops with savvy international buyers, with more of them in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles’s more upscale neighborhoods and far fewer in the Midwest. Even New York City’s wine shops seemed to be a Riesling desert. White Burgundy was, however, still in profusion.
The fact that Riesling sales are rising is a surprise to those not selling it, but some are, in fact, catching on belatedly.
One key reason that sales are moving forward is that Germany followed the exceptional 2001 vintage with superb quality in 2002, 2004, and 2005. Even the ’03 wines were tolerable. Meanwhile, Australian Riesling sales in the United States rose between 2001 and 2005 from 1,900 cases to 57,000 cases. And a key point here is that this is not simply a sweet, quaffing wine: about 95% of all Australian Riesling is bone dry!
All this might seem to be great news for wineries and growers in California’s cooler regions. All they have to do is focus on Riesling and ...
But wait. Over the last 17 years, Riesling acreage in California has shrunk from 2,400 acres to 1,650 acres. In their quest to stick to the tried and true, California wine makers have shrunk their options down to the standard varieties. Riesling wasn’t included.
Indeed, it seems that even though the evidence is all there that Americans really like Riesling and will buy it, the marketing departments of major wine companies do not want to know about this trend because they are currently convincing themselves that the next fad wine will be Pinot Noir. Pinot Passion is currently occupying growers and marketing departments pretty much the same way Merlot Mania captivated everyone in the early 1990s.
This me-too, follow-the-leader approach has pushed California’s Pinot Noir plantings well past the practical level. I view the amount of Pinot now in the ground (23,323 acres in 2005 compared with 8,264 in 1996) as an absurd over-reaction to the film Sideways which elevated Pinot to heights no one ever imagined.
Now California is saddled with far more Merlot (more than 52,000 acres of it) than it can ever sell. And Pinot Noir is the next grape that surely will be in such huge surplus that many wineries will be figuratively choking on it. Worse is that much of the Pinot Noir recently planted is in exactly the same cool-climate locations that Riesling would do rather well in.
And yet, Riesling’s potential is huge. One of the finest I ever tasted came from grapes grown in the Ballard Canyon area of Santa Barbara County. But those grapes are long gone, torn out to make way for Chardonnay. Another great Riesling was from the Los Carneros region, off the Winery Lake property of Rene di Rosa. But those grapes are also long gone, ripped out to make way for Pinot Noir. Another was a startlingly dry wine from Chalk Hill, where homes now sit.
Realistically, 1,650 acres of Riesling in the entire state isn’t much, and those of us who believe in this grape would love to see more of it. Primarily in places like Anderson Valley of Mendocino County; high ridges where it’s cooler; Carneros; Monterey County (yes, even in the Santa Lucia Highlands); Santa Barbara County’s Sta. Rita Hills, and the Sonoma Coast at places like Freestone and in the western Russian River Valley.
To be sure, there are still some Riesling vines left here and there. Some of the best are found in Cole Ranch, the tiny Mendocino County appellation. Milla Handley, among others, uses Riesling from that appellation to make a splendid wine.
But if this quiet trend is for real, and I suspect it is, American wineries will face a crucial shortage of Riesling very soon. If not immediately.
The shortage began nearly a decade ago in some areas. A number of New York wineries, after years of being ignored even locally, began to get recognition for their sensational Rieslings that were truly world-class. As they caught the eye of locals in New York City, wineries soon put Riesling on allocation. One winery (Glenora Cellars) actually ran out of Riesling and had to buy more from Washington to fill the demand in its tasting room.
More recently, Fetzer Vineyards in Mendocino County began to notice that it needed to make more and more of its sweeter-styled Riesling (about 3% residual sugar) to meet national demand, and by 2004, it was clear to winemaker Dennis Martin that he would run out with the 2005: there weren’t sufficient high-caliber grapes available to make more than the 80,000 cases Fetzer made that year. And he still needed a lot more.
So Fetzer contracted with a winery in Germany to make a non-vintage German Riesling, which it put out under its Valley Oaks label, but he sold it only in 13 states where the California version wasn’t sold at all. The wine, from the 2005 harvest, was released just weeks ago.
One reason that Fetzer can’t buy enough Riesling here is that Kendall-Jackson makes some 180,000 cases of an excellent Riesling.
And the top-selling wine at the tasting room of Napa Valley entrepreneur Daryl Sattui at V. Sattui Winery is not Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s Riesling. Tourists taste it at the tasting bar and take a bottle outside for their lunch at the picnic tables.
As California went chasing after a ghost with Merlot (and soon with Pinot Noir, not to mention Zinfandel), others stayed the course, and that bodes quite well for states like Oregon and Washington, the aforementioned New York, as well as Michigan and Ohio
and a handful of other states. Riesling is thriving there.
The two northwest states each make splendid Rieslings, but for the moment most of the wines are far too low in price for consumers to take them seriously. (Chateau Ste. Michelle makes a large amount of its regular off-dry Riesling that is sold nationally, but its superior Dry Riesling, of which a substantial amount -- 8,000 cases -- is made, is sold exclusively in the Pacific Northwest. At a suggested retail price of $8!)
Then there are the world-class Rieslings of Michigan. Peninsula Cellars, Chateau Grand Traverse, and Black Star are but three superstars. Ohio has a half dozen great Riesling makers topped by Ferrante. And New York has so many that it would be a shame to name only a few and leave out others. But the pioneering Vinifera Cellars of Dr. Konstantin Frank is surely one of the best, with Fox Run, Swedish Hill, Lakewood, Heron Hill, and at least two dozen more offering star Rieslings.
As if that’s not enough, Canada enters the scene with brilliant Rieslings from Lake Erie North Shore and Niagara Peninsula in Ontario (Cave Spring's lineup is very impressive), and British Columbia’s entrants include dramatic things from Harry McWaters’ Sumac Ridge, Gehringer Brothers, Cedar Creek, and Mission Hill.
Sounds like a lot, huh? It’s barely a drop in the bucket. All of these are high-caliber wines; world-class efforts that show a distinctive regional as well as varietal character, but all are made in small amounts.
And here’s the best part for those of you reading this in the latter days of 2006: Every one of these wineries’ Rieslings sells for about half of what it ought to sell for based solely on quality. A prime reason for this is that a lot of people still think all Riesling is sweet and cloying, and so demand is pretty much fueled by wine lovers, who are eager to snap up as much of the good stuff as the wineries can make, especially if they are $10 and $15 and $20, when in quality terms they taste like they ought to sell for more.
If the vast majority of American wine drinkers ever discovers this value and starts consuming them with the glee that the wine lovers now do, there will not be enough Riesling in the ground to deal with the demand, prices will rise, and what previously happened with Merlot and Pinot will surely happen with Riesling: a lot of it will be planted in the wrong locations.
At present, for instance, some Pinot Noir has been planted in marginal spots --places where Riesling might grow to brilliance. But if the growers can’t be encouraged to bud over that bland Pinot to potentially exciting Riesling, it may well be due to the fact that the larger wine companies are as yet un-persuaded that Riesling is back to stay.
As for those who love to track the regional distinctiveness of these wines, we can’t delineate this much at this early stage. Those with a keen sense of style will pick up the distinctive minerally notes in the Cole Ranch wines, the floral notes in Stony Hill and Smith-Madrone (Spring Mountain),
But we don’t yet have consistent examples of Riesling from Carneros, Sonoma Coast, Russian River Valley, and other potential paradises for this superb grape -- one that most certainly responds to its environs in a way that puts a smile on the faces of terroirists.
~ Dan Berger, Editor-at-Large
To comment on Dan Berger’s writings and thoughts, contact him at d.berger@appellationamerica.com
No, 100 years ago, the hottest wines in the eyes of collectors were from the coolest growing region in Europe, where the sun shines on vines at such a steep angle that the best vineyards face south. Germany’s prized grape, Riesling, made those esteemed wines, and the surprise is that the wines were not only Trockenbeerenauslese, the ultrasweet wines that have long been the target of wealthy collectors.
Discover Rieslings with distinct regional character 
from across the continent.
Order direct from the wineries here!
from across the continent.Order direct from the wineries here!
Some of the most expensive wines were dry. Some were off-dry. Some were only slightly sweet.
Hock, as it was called, was a wine rated as incomparable. Prices for them were high. Beyond that, each of Germany’s wine regions yielded a distinctly different aromatic taste sensation, proving conclusively in that low-tech era that the site on which the grapes grew dictated as much, if not more of the character of the resulting wine than did the variety.
Of the thousands of grape varieties around the world that are used to make table wines, only a dozen or more are considered classics. Some believe Riesling to be the greatest grape of all.
But when a wine goes out of favor with the masses, often the grape that makes it wanes and withers and soon is abandoned. Since Riesling hasn’t been on the radar screen of most American wine consumers since perhaps the early 1970s, many Cabernet-aholics, Zin-freaks, and Pinot-philes might consider it quaint. And thus many growers have all but forsaken it, despite critical acclaim from a few esotericists who cling to the variety.
But sales figures don’t lie. In various assessments, from anecdotal evidence to supermarket scanner data, it is clear that, despite no klieg-light attention from the glossy magazines and no stratospheric scores from singular wine critics, Riesling never really died, and it is now quickly racing back into many Americans’ consciousness.
U.S. supermarket scanner data shows that U.S. Riesling sales have shot up 172% in 2005 over the prior year.
Still, Riesling’s rise from a smallish base makes its rebirth a rather surreptitious one. Some supposedly savvy wine people don’t know of Riesling’s resurgence. They still think it is a quaint notion that anyone who calls himself a wine lover would actually consume Riesling. But the story, as Lewis Carroll might say, gets curiouser and curiouser.
In 2003, as I was going gaga over the 2001 German Rieslings and writing nirvana-esque commentaries about them, I began to do a little self-serving research. I went into and called literally two dozen wine shops to see what Rieslings they carried. I was looking to buy quality wines cheaply since most retailers had ordered them when the euro was standing at about 88 cents, and by the time I was looking, the Euro was already well over $1.10. I was bargain shopping, assuming (rightly) that few would have been re-priced upward.
And what I learned was very strange and nothing like anything I had ever encountered. Few wine shops had any Rieslings at all! Despite the fact that the 2001 German vintage was widely known to be absolutely classic, most shop personnel said they had no call for Riesling, and they were proud of their high-end Chardonnays and Viogniers. From the sound of it, Riesling had died sans obituary.
Yet at a handful of shops -- no more than six or seven -- operated by savvier people, Riesling sales were going nuts. In general, these were large wine shops with savvy international buyers, with more of them in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles’s more upscale neighborhoods and far fewer in the Midwest. Even New York City’s wine shops seemed to be a Riesling desert. White Burgundy was, however, still in profusion.
The fact that Riesling sales are rising is a surprise to those not selling it, but some are, in fact, catching on belatedly.
One key reason that sales are moving forward is that Germany followed the exceptional 2001 vintage with superb quality in 2002, 2004, and 2005. Even the ’03 wines were tolerable. Meanwhile, Australian Riesling sales in the United States rose between 2001 and 2005 from 1,900 cases to 57,000 cases. And a key point here is that this is not simply a sweet, quaffing wine: about 95% of all Australian Riesling is bone dry!
All this might seem to be great news for wineries and growers in California’s cooler regions. All they have to do is focus on Riesling and ...
But wait. Over the last 17 years, Riesling acreage in California has shrunk from 2,400 acres to 1,650 acres. In their quest to stick to the tried and true, California wine makers have shrunk their options down to the standard varieties. Riesling wasn’t included.
Indeed, it seems that even though the evidence is all there that Americans really like Riesling and will buy it, the marketing departments of major wine companies do not want to know about this trend because they are currently convincing themselves that the next fad wine will be Pinot Noir. Pinot Passion is currently occupying growers and marketing departments pretty much the same way Merlot Mania captivated everyone in the early 1990s.
This me-too, follow-the-leader approach has pushed California’s Pinot Noir plantings well past the practical level. I view the amount of Pinot now in the ground (23,323 acres in 2005 compared with 8,264 in 1996) as an absurd over-reaction to the film Sideways which elevated Pinot to heights no one ever imagined.
Now California is saddled with far more Merlot (more than 52,000 acres of it) than it can ever sell. And Pinot Noir is the next grape that surely will be in such huge surplus that many wineries will be figuratively choking on it. Worse is that much of the Pinot Noir recently planted is in exactly the same cool-climate locations that Riesling would do rather well in.
And yet, Riesling’s potential is huge. One of the finest I ever tasted came from grapes grown in the Ballard Canyon area of Santa Barbara County. But those grapes are long gone, torn out to make way for Chardonnay. Another great Riesling was from the Los Carneros region, off the Winery Lake property of Rene di Rosa. But those grapes are also long gone, ripped out to make way for Pinot Noir. Another was a startlingly dry wine from Chalk Hill, where homes now sit.
Realistically, 1,650 acres of Riesling in the entire state isn’t much, and those of us who believe in this grape would love to see more of it. Primarily in places like Anderson Valley of Mendocino County; high ridges where it’s cooler; Carneros; Monterey County (yes, even in the Santa Lucia Highlands); Santa Barbara County’s Sta. Rita Hills, and the Sonoma Coast at places like Freestone and in the western Russian River Valley.
To be sure, there are still some Riesling vines left here and there. Some of the best are found in Cole Ranch, the tiny Mendocino County appellation. Milla Handley, among others, uses Riesling from that appellation to make a splendid wine.
But if this quiet trend is for real, and I suspect it is, American wineries will face a crucial shortage of Riesling very soon. If not immediately.
The shortage began nearly a decade ago in some areas. A number of New York wineries, after years of being ignored even locally, began to get recognition for their sensational Rieslings that were truly world-class. As they caught the eye of locals in New York City, wineries soon put Riesling on allocation. One winery (Glenora Cellars) actually ran out of Riesling and had to buy more from Washington to fill the demand in its tasting room.
More recently, Fetzer Vineyards in Mendocino County began to notice that it needed to make more and more of its sweeter-styled Riesling (about 3% residual sugar) to meet national demand, and by 2004, it was clear to winemaker Dennis Martin that he would run out with the 2005: there weren’t sufficient high-caliber grapes available to make more than the 80,000 cases Fetzer made that year. And he still needed a lot more.So Fetzer contracted with a winery in Germany to make a non-vintage German Riesling, which it put out under its Valley Oaks label, but he sold it only in 13 states where the California version wasn’t sold at all. The wine, from the 2005 harvest, was released just weeks ago.
One reason that Fetzer can’t buy enough Riesling here is that Kendall-Jackson makes some 180,000 cases of an excellent Riesling.
And the top-selling wine at the tasting room of Napa Valley entrepreneur Daryl Sattui at V. Sattui Winery is not Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s Riesling. Tourists taste it at the tasting bar and take a bottle outside for their lunch at the picnic tables.
As California went chasing after a ghost with Merlot (and soon with Pinot Noir, not to mention Zinfandel), others stayed the course, and that bodes quite well for states like Oregon and Washington, the aforementioned New York, as well as Michigan and Ohio
and a handful of other states. Riesling is thriving there.The two northwest states each make splendid Rieslings, but for the moment most of the wines are far too low in price for consumers to take them seriously. (Chateau Ste. Michelle makes a large amount of its regular off-dry Riesling that is sold nationally, but its superior Dry Riesling, of which a substantial amount -- 8,000 cases -- is made, is sold exclusively in the Pacific Northwest. At a suggested retail price of $8!)
Then there are the world-class Rieslings of Michigan. Peninsula Cellars, Chateau Grand Traverse, and Black Star are but three superstars. Ohio has a half dozen great Riesling makers topped by Ferrante. And New York has so many that it would be a shame to name only a few and leave out others. But the pioneering Vinifera Cellars of Dr. Konstantin Frank is surely one of the best, with Fox Run, Swedish Hill, Lakewood, Heron Hill, and at least two dozen more offering star Rieslings.
As if that’s not enough, Canada enters the scene with brilliant Rieslings from Lake Erie North Shore and Niagara Peninsula in Ontario (Cave Spring's lineup is very impressive), and British Columbia’s entrants include dramatic things from Harry McWaters’ Sumac Ridge, Gehringer Brothers, Cedar Creek, and Mission Hill.
Sounds like a lot, huh? It’s barely a drop in the bucket. All of these are high-caliber wines; world-class efforts that show a distinctive regional as well as varietal character, but all are made in small amounts.
And here’s the best part for those of you reading this in the latter days of 2006: Every one of these wineries’ Rieslings sells for about half of what it ought to sell for based solely on quality. A prime reason for this is that a lot of people still think all Riesling is sweet and cloying, and so demand is pretty much fueled by wine lovers, who are eager to snap up as much of the good stuff as the wineries can make, especially if they are $10 and $15 and $20, when in quality terms they taste like they ought to sell for more.
If the vast majority of American wine drinkers ever discovers this value and starts consuming them with the glee that the wine lovers now do, there will not be enough Riesling in the ground to deal with the demand, prices will rise, and what previously happened with Merlot and Pinot will surely happen with Riesling: a lot of it will be planted in the wrong locations.
At present, for instance, some Pinot Noir has been planted in marginal spots --places where Riesling might grow to brilliance. But if the growers can’t be encouraged to bud over that bland Pinot to potentially exciting Riesling, it may well be due to the fact that the larger wine companies are as yet un-persuaded that Riesling is back to stay.
As for those who love to track the regional distinctiveness of these wines, we can’t delineate this much at this early stage. Those with a keen sense of style will pick up the distinctive minerally notes in the Cole Ranch wines, the floral notes in Stony Hill and Smith-Madrone (Spring Mountain),
Discover Rieslings with distinct regional character
from across the continent.
Order direct from the wineries here!
the citrus-tropical character of Trefethen (Oak Knoll District), and the overt fruit-basket style of Greenwood Ridge (Anderson Valley).
from across the continent.Order direct from the wineries here!
But we don’t yet have consistent examples of Riesling from Carneros, Sonoma Coast, Russian River Valley, and other potential paradises for this superb grape -- one that most certainly responds to its environs in a way that puts a smile on the faces of terroirists.
~ Dan Berger, Editor-at-Large
To comment on Dan Berger’s writings and thoughts, contact him at d.berger@appellationamerica.com
