Riesling Revisisted

As
I was packing to leave on a summer tour of the vineyards and
wineries of the Rhine in Germany, I struggled with the
weighty issues we all struggle with. Am I bringing too many
clothes? What kind of shoes? Sandals? No, not sandals, not
to efficient, practical Germany; pack sensible shoes for
Germany, I thought – that sturdy hand-made Canadian pair
would be good – and save the sexy man sandals for Spain,
France or Italy. And then it hit me: my ideas about the
people I was going to meet, the wines and the food, even
down to the choices of what I thought I was going to wear
carried within them a distinction between sophisticated
worldly Roman Europe – Italy, France, Spain, others – and
Germania, the untamed Europe east of the Rhine and north of
the Danube that the ancient Romans never managed to
subdue.

Even though it’s
been more than 2OOO years, life on both sides of the river
is still very different. In archetype, the Germans are
accurate and technical, convinced and efficient, although
lacking a bit in the strong right-brain skills we still call
utterly Romantic. In stereotype, they are emotionally
capable of gemuetligkeit, but only after a couple of giant
beers. In reality, they are focused, proud people who like
things neat. West of the Rhine, France and Spain make many
different white, pink and red wines from dozens of different
grapes, as do the Italians. On the other side of the river,
the Germans make 99% white wine that’s overwhelmingly
Riesling, as if to say, not only is it enough to do one
thing really well in this wine world, it is both more
efficient and more likely if you are concentrating on one
kind of wine.

German wine
poses a real challenge in the US market to everybody from
the importer all the way to the consumer. First of all, it’s
one grape, almost all Riesling, and that makes it hard to
distinguish clearly between different wines. Next, there’s
the long and indecipherable wine label in German that’s
clearly trying to tell you something, but what? I speak
German fluently, and I can’t figure them out without a cheat
sheet. Finally, Americans bear a prejudice against wines
that are in any way perceived as sweet. We like wine with a
little residual sugar well enough to slurp down 11+ million
cases of white zin a year, but we all agree that it’s cheap.
In the US, this perception hurts German Riesling, which is
already naturally very fruity and does often contain plenty
of residual sugar as well.

“Two world wars
were very bad for German wine,” importer Rudi Wiest reminds
us, a little unnecessarily. “The 1971 wine law”, which
codified the current incomprehensible
Kabinett-Spaetlese-Auslese system, “has meant confusion for
the consumer.” Worse yet, Wiest says, the current
designations are based only on sugar levels in the grapes,
“with no limit on yield”. This means that at the end of the
bottling line, a vineyard producing eight tons an acre can
get the highest normal ranking – Auslese – just like a
vineyard yielding two tons. “Big producers really capitalize
on this system,” Wiest says, by producing vast quantities of
cheap wine with the best designations which naturally tend
to be sweet. “It’s been bad for quality and bad for image.
How do you explain the difference between a real Auslese and
an $8.99 Auslese?”

To illustrate
how the mighty have fallen and what’s the potential for a
German wine resurgence on the world stage, Wiest brandishes
a collector’s item, 1961 Consumer Reports whiskey and wine
guide. 1959 Chateaux Petrus, Margaux and the like ring up
for about $7.95. One of the 1959 Bernkasteler dessert wines
goes for $11. If you extrapolated that to today’s
interstellar Chateau Petrus, you’re looking at $15OO for
five glasses of wine. Hard as the price is to imagine, it’s
almost more impossible for modern wine lovers to picture any
sweet white wine on the planet being accorded the same level
of respect as the greatest dry red wines of
France.

WHAT
the RHINE MEANS to WINE
The Rhine is the geographical western boundary between two
historical worlds, and the river represents the furthest
reach of the conquering Roman empire through France. After
it descends from its source high in the Alps, the river
flows relentlessly northward almost a thousand miles in a
straight line, through France and Germany, past Luxembourg
and Belgium until it reaches The Netherlands and the North
Sea. Right in the middle however, just west of Frankfurt,
the river meets the Taunus Mountains and takes one dramatic
left turn for 2O miles, then another dramatic right turn
back north to the sea. This region is called the Rheingau,
the bend in the river where the Rhine slows a bit, grows
both turbulent and shallow, and makes its way through steep
hillsides until it can resume its course. The Rheingau gets
its name from “aue”, the ancient Germanic name for the long
channel islands that divide the river at this point into
almost parallel lanes.

Over the
millennia, the Rhine has both deposited rich soils in the
Rheingau and exposed ancient geology by carving away the
hillsides. Since the river runs east to west here, the
land’s southern exposure to the sun is unique along the
otherwise northerly river. Many of Germany’s most famous
Rieslings come from this region, and the Rheingau’s steep
hills and fertile soils are famous for growing rich ripe
grapes that are full of flavor.

Johannisberg is
literally a mountain of Riesling rising within sight of the
Rhine. Its slopes are covered with many vineyards devoted to
one grape, and atop the Johannisberg sits the castle –
Schloss Johannisberg – equally devoted to Riesling for the
last three centuries or so. According to legend, Charlemagne
became the first person in history to discover a
microclimate when he noticed that the snows on the mountain
melted earlier than the rest of the landscape. His son,
Ludwig the Pious, made wine in the early 8OOs from vineyards
planted at the foot of the Johannisberg, and for the last
9OO years or so, the entire hillside has been growing grapes
and producing singular and recognized wines. Insignificance
is too big a word to describe how I felt as I descended the
stone stairway to the ancient cellars of Schloss
Johannisberg. Dwarfed by history, maybe, but now that’s too
many words. Small talk we made as we stood on the stairs for
a moment seemed smaller than usual, then winery manager
Christian Witte opened the door to the cellars to reveal the
entire expanse illuminated by candlelight. We crunched
loudly across the loose stone floors as we walked between
rows of wood casks, the candlelight falling darkly all
around us. Christian spoke a little about history and
continuity in producing wine. If the track record of his
predecessors at Schloss Johannisberg is any measure, he is
at the beginning of a tenure that could last 3O or 4O years.
We were in awe, and there are not too many words for
that.

These cellars
have outlived many owners, managers and wine writers, I
thought. Napoleon seized the winery and awarded it to a
loyal ally in the early 18OOs. It eventually became property
of the Habsburg emperor in Austria who gave it to the
Metternich family in exchange for 1/1Oth of the annual
harvest, an amount that is still paid today. Deep in the
cellar, a giant wood cask is engraved with the words of the
German poet Heinrich Heine: “If my faith could move
mountains, Johannisberg is the mountain I would carry with
me.” I realized that seeing the cellars in candlelight was
perhaps the least efficient but most authentic way. We were
seeing it not entirely for ourselves, but as others in
history have seen it. And by the bottle, we can still have
Johannisberg with us.

THE
HEART has ITS RIESLINGS
“I believe you can make a Riesling taste better for a lower
price than a Sauvignon Blanc, for example, because of the
residual sugar you have to work with,” says Alex
Bartholomaus, President and CEO of Billington Imports.
“Sweetness is not a disadvantage,” and Riesling is not on
the ropes. “Chateau Ste-Michelle Riesling is strictly
allocated,” he points out, “and Bonny Doon’s Pacific Rim is
the most popular non-Chardonnay restaurant wine in America.”
This is all well and good for the grape, but “Germany does
little to make itself market appealing,” Bartholomaus says.
Riesling today “is a phobia for people over 45. From 35 to
45, there’s just not much knowledge there. But 25 to 35” –
he calls this the I’ll-try-anything crowd – “are the wine
lovers we need to reach” with creative new wines and new
labels to help people get into Riesling.

“Marketing has
to be simplified. Stress the brand name and the varietal,”
but stay the course with traditional German labels. “If you
want to be more creative, then go for utter deviation,” he
says, referring specifically to his 2OO3 Big Tattoo White (a
tasty blend of Riesling and pinot blanc) and the
ultra-modern labeling of the 2OO3 KUHL Riesling, and the WAY
KUHL that is allegedly in the pipeline. “German wines work
if we educate, educate, educate,” Bartholomaus says. “It
must be a continuous, redundant effort,” not unlike grape
growing and wine making. “We have to be repetitive and build
on the repetition.”

SUGAR-FREE
and LOVING IT
Anyone who thinks terroir doesn’t exist – that’s the notion
that the earth (Latin, terra) directly influences the flavor
of wine in the bottle – ought to take the short drive up the
Mosel River valley. At the mouth of the river where the
Mosel meets the Rhine, the earth is like topsoil, rich and
verdant, famous for producing big fruit-driven Rieslings of
ripeness, depth and power. Not even 75 miles west on the
flood plain of the Mosel valley, the soils are entirely
different, dominated by slate laid down over millennia of
flooding and receding. Sugar is secondary here: Mosel
Riesling is generally dry and mineral-focused, perfumed and
aromatic.

It’s the same
sun, the same grapes and essentially the same people with
access to the same wine making techniques. Soil and the
near-absence of any residual sugar in the wine – in
wine-speak, this is called dry, especially when referring to
a white wine – make these wines unique and uniquely flavored
among German wines. “All roads are leading to drier versions
of German wines,” says Ian Ribowsky, portfolio director of
German wines at Palm Bay Imports. “There is a growing call
for drier wines, for a much brighter, stylish wine that has
both fruit and acid. The balance between the two is
critical.”

When the sugar
recedes, it exposes a world of flavors that I find difficult
to discern sometimes when there’s a layer of sugar over
everything. It’s natural to imagine the difference between
these neighboring wine regions must be the soil, but it’s
much more.

Raimund Pruem
wants to develop another important difference, one he hopes
will carry his family’s winery, S.A. Pruem, into the 21st
century and beyond. “To work S.A. Pruem as a brand, this is
the finale of my life,” he says, looking a little young to
be talking that way and not a day over fifty-something.
Pruem has embarked on an aggressive modern style of Riesling
and is reaching out to the world with it. “I try to put my
signature on every wine I make,” Raimund says, and it is a
thoroughly modern signature designed to compete on a world
stage. Just a few years away from the winery’s 1OOth
birthday, Pruem is focused on a new line of “branded”
Rieslings: Essence and Solitaire. By modern, Pruem means a
number of things – limited production, contract growers,
stainless steel, modern label, modern screwcap closure – but
more than anything else, it means dry, sugar-free and loving
it. “There is room for change,” Ribowsky says, specifically
referring to his client Pruem. “I’d advocate a place for
both concepts, traditional and modern. The marketplace is
receptive to both.”

Palm Bay
recently updated the labels for the classic Pruem wines,
“taking the simple steps of moving legal information to the
back label and cleaning up the front.” Even that minor
modernization had a real impact, Ribowsky says. Raimund is
one of many Pruem winemakers in the Mosel, whose family came
here more than eight centuries ago from the town of Pruem in
the Eiffel region just north of Wehlen, their home now. One
of his ancestors, Jodocus Pruem, was a tireless improver of
the people. In 1842, he built two giant sundials –
sonnenuhr, in German – one in the town of Wehlen and another
in Zeltingen, so the people could improve themselves by
knowing what time it was whenever the sun was shining. The
sundials gave the surrounding vineyards their names –
branded them, if you will – and over time, unsurprisingly,
they’ve produced relentlessly excellent wines: lots of sun
is the first thing you need for a functional sundial, and
lots of sun makes great wine. Raimund is a man who carries
around him the aura of occasion. Just to stand for a moment
and look out from his patio and see vineyards climbing up
the hillsides across the river is a small event. Off to the
left, the Wehlen sundial is illuminated by the setting sun,
and we see it from the inventor’s perspective.

It not only
stands the test of time: it is time.