Wines of the Rhine
One of London’s most venerable wine merchants, Berry Brothers & Rudd, recently released a copy of its 1909 price list. It made for interesting reading, providing an insight into an era when wine was a gentleman’s pursuit and the New World was a source of cheap wool. It’s fascinating to chart the rise and fall in popularity of some of the world’s most iconic wine regions: bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy were as valued as they are today, but their prices were topped, in many instances, by wines from Germany.
Back then, Germany’s iconic grape, Riesling (pronounced reece-ling) was held in high regard. No aristocratic dinner party would have been considered complete without a few bottles of wine made from grapes grown on the banks of the Rhine’s tributaries. The jewel in Germany’s crown began its fall from grace after the First World War, but the final nail in its coffin came with the advent of sickly hock, sold cheaply on the supermarket shelves.
Riesling’s renaissance, long overdue in the minds of many, has now begun – and the grape’s heartland lies a short drive west from Wertheim Village. The steep vineyards that line the Mosel river are the source of some of Germany’s most sought-after white wines. The Mosel’s climate is at the limits of viability for grape growing, so the region’s wines tend to be delicate and light-bodied. Their acidity is so high that they need some sugar to balance them out – but that doesn’t mean that they’re cloyingly sweet: balance is all in these wines. One of the best places to taste them is at Dr Loosen’s winery, where you can also taste a range of wines made from grapes grown in the warmer, riper Pfalz region, which lies to the southeast of the Mosel. These tend to be fuller-bodied, drier wines, with lots of rich tropical fruit flavours.
The Nahe river – and its vineyards – lies between the Mosel and the Pfalz. This charmingly bucolic area, with its rolling green fields and picture-postcard villages, boasts some of Germany’s most complex geology, and this helps to create layers of flavours in the Rieslings made here. You can taste this complexity in the wines made at Weingut Dönhoff – and you can also taste richer, creamier wines made from Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris (a fuller-bodied, more flavoursome version of northern Italy’s Pinot Grigio).
Many of the German wines you’ll see in the supermarkets come from the Rheingau, a region located on the northern shores of the Rhine. But while the area is a source of most of Germany’s big brands, it’s also capable of producing some very fine Rieslings indeed. Slightly warmer than the Mosel, although still a shade cooler than the Nahe, its Rieslings range in style from near-dry to lusciously sweet. Weingut Leitz makes a truly classic range of wines from the region. A visit to the winery (by appointment only, like the other two wineries cited above) should provide you with the chance to taste Rieslings from some of the Rheingau’s most classic vineyards. And, once you’ve tasted Leitz’s wines (or those of Dr Loosen or Dönhoff), it’s a fair bet that you too will become one of a growing numbers of converts to Riesling’s charms.
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- Pictures courtesy of ABS Wine Agencies
23-05-2011
