Annette and I threw a Summer of Riesling Party at our Washington DC area home. Annette Schiller in the invitation: “Christian and I are very passionate about Rieslings. That's what we grew up with. The kick off events of the Summer of Riesling in DC and the fantastic tasting in NY left us with the notion that we could not let the summer pass without organizing an event during the Summer of Riesling 2013 and 31 Days of German Riesling 2013 in the United States.
We would be very pleased if you and your spouse/partner could join us on
Sunday July 21
6 pm to 9 pm
at our home in McLean VA.
Please bring a well iced bottle per person of your favorite Riesling, sweet or dry, from Germany or elsewhere. I will provide light fingerfood.”
90 people showed up, each one with a bottle of Riesling. Thus, we had 90 Rieslings to taste. It was great fun!
The Summer of Riesling and the 31 Days of German Riesling
The Summer of Riesling is the brainchild of New York City’s Riesling Guru Paul Grieco, from Hearth Restaurant and the Terroir Winebars. In addition, there is the 31 Days of German Riesling - As part of the Summer of Riesling, during the month of July, participating restaurants and retailers are focusing on German Riesling.
The Summer of Riesling concept was created in 2008 when Paul Grieco decided that during the summer the ONLY white wine that Terroir customers could get was Riesling. The following years the Summer of Riesling expanded in various ways, initially by enlisting other Manhattan wine bars as part of the celebration and adding a concert where the only alcoholic beverage available was Riesling—no beer, no spirits. In 2011 Paul took the Summer of Riesling national, with support from the International Riesling Foundation (IRF), an organization specifically created to promote Rieslings from around the world.
Paul Grieco: The Summer of Riesling
The Summer of Riesling - in Paul Grieco o-tone:
“What is it? - a love affair with the world's greatest grape expressed in full Technicolor.
Why? - because we must overcome this hackneyed belief that the glorious diversity of Riesling is also a fault...simply put, no grape can do what the Riesling grape can do.
Where? - every corner of the globe where wine is available.
When? - from June 21st to September 21st (we ain't kidding when we call it the Summer of Riesling!).
How? - by bringing everyone together and handing them a glass of Riesling and engaging them in conversation, with the thrust of the dialogue centering on:
Balance...of bone-crunching acidity and potential sweetness
Complexity...like a conversation with Jeffrey Sachs
Delicacy...as if Benjamin Millepied was dancing across your tongue
Longevity...suffice it to say, Moses lived a brief life compared to bottles of this wine
Sense of Place...even Bigfoot's footprint cannot encapsulate all the terroir that Riesling contains”
Riesling
Worldwide, there are about 34.000 hectares planted with Riesling. Germany – with 22.400 hectares – accounts for 2/3 of the total. The second largest Riesling producer is Australia, with 4500 hectares. But this is only about 1/10 of the total. Alsace follows with 3500 hectares.
Austria, the US with Washington State and New York State as well as New Zealand make up the remainder. But overall, Riesling is really a niche wine, accounting for only less than 1 percent of total wine production in the world - but a very special niche wine.
Dry and Sweet Riesling
Many wine drinkers, in particular outside of Europe, when they see a Riesling in the shelves, have the association of a sweet-style wine. This is however misguided. Rieslings as a rule are dry wines. Of course, there are the famous sugar sweet Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, Eiswein and Schilfwein wines from Austria and Germany, the Sélection de Grains Nobles from France, the icewines from Canada and other Rieslings, made from botrytized, dried or frozen grapes.
The grapes that go into these wines have such a high sugar content that there is nothing you can do to make dry wines out of these grapes. They inevitably produce nobly sweet wines. But apart from these specialty wine, which account for only a tiny share of total production, Riesling grapes in Germany, Austria, Alsace, the US and Australia have normal sugar content at the time of fermentation and tend to produce dry wines, when fully fermented.
However, modern cellar methods allow winemakers in Germany (and elsewhere) to produce wines with a bit of residual sugar with these grapes. These are exceptional wines, essentially made by not letting the fermentation going its full course so that natural sugar remains in the wine. Alternatively, German winemakers are allowed to add sweet-reserve (sterilized grape juice) to increase the sweetness level in the wine, but today, this is mostly done, if at all, for fine tuning the residual sweetness. These fruity-sweet wines are the wines that are so popular among the fans of German wine in the world. These sweet-style wines have lost popularity in Germany, although there appears to be a comeback, but in any case remain very popular outside of Germany, for example in the US.
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German Wine Basics: Sugar in the Grape - Alcohol and Sweetness in the Wine
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Great event!
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