The Essential Truth of Riesling

Riesling, once Australia’s premier white wine grape, is losing more ground to chardonnay. It’s probably better than ever before, yet it has an inbuilt time-bomb that takes its gloss away just when it needs it most.

The regrettable fact is that most riesling is put up for sale when it tastes its worst. It is accepted by our best riesling makers that its wine dips away between eighteen months and five years of age, well below its true form. Just like an adolescent, it needs special consideration while meandering through its formative years.

‘At around eighteen months riesling loses its aromatics and floral characters’, agrees winemaker John Vickery. ‘The 1990 Leo Buring Leonay is a case in point. It’s in a bad phase right now. It’s not a bad wine, but it’s lost its floral aroma and zest.’

A little jaded from consulting at arm’s length for Leo Buring, John Vickery was recently welcomed into the Orlando-Wyndham group and given a winery to rebuild and manage. Not just any winery, but the former Chateau Leonay, the very place at which he had for over 35 years created a legend in riesling. His Leo Buring DW rieslings are still the Australian benchmarks for the grape.

Ironically, Chateau Leonay, now called Richmond Grove by its new owners, was purchased from the Penfolds Group. Penfolds owns Leo Buring brand and continues to lease a large cellar space there. ‘It’s an unusual feeling to work in the same winery as much of my own old wines, but being unable to touch them’, says Vickery.

Vickery says he’s always appreciated that riesling needs at least five years to develop, unless the wine’s dimensions are big enough for it to develop faster, as those from warmer years or warmer climates frequently do. The Barossa-based rieslings of Elderton, Bethany and Krondorf are cases in point. The more elegant Clare and Eden Valley styles, he says, will take longer to arrive at full maturity, so their adolescence is more pronounced.

Tim Knappstein’s track record as a maker of riesling matches his enthusiasm for the stuff. Riesling is especially hard to sell when it’s entering its ‘hole’, he believes. ‘People would much rather an older wine than a two year-old riesling, although most of us expect to drink riesling young and fresh and aren’t even aware of its potential to develop as aged wine’, he says.

Knappstein adds that in their dull period, rieslings are neither fish nor fowl; neither young and grapey, nor complex and mature.

‘They lose their fruit, go dull, thin, boring and flat. And then they come back, better than ever. As a general rule, then, drink them at younger than two years or else later than four.’

Riesling’s problem is made worse, says Knappstein, because few of us actually cellar wine any more. Vickery believes the industry’s customers should be enticed to start putting wines away again, since the wineries can’t afford to do it themselves: ‘We’re just not getting our young rieslings out quickly enough. They’re still good-flavoured wines by the time the public sees them, with soft limey fruit, but they’ve lost their bouquet.’

John Vickery points out there’s another style of riesling which does apparently develop without falling into the same hazard. It’s a modern version, pioneered by Orlando, in which the terpene level of rieslings is enzymatically enhanced. The results are very aromatic wines, with a distinctive bath-powder and confection-like fruit aroma which John Vickery enjoys and likens to frontignan. These wines, he says, come faster to maturity. The success of wines like Orlando’s St Helga and Jacob’s Creek Rhine Riesling shows that consumers appreciate the difference.

Terpenes are important naturally-occuring flavouring constituents of riesling. Orlando’s Technical Director, Robin Day, says that in addition to enhancing terpene levels in the winery, his company has spent a great deal of time monitoring levels in the field. ‘We’re only fine-tuning what’s naturally available’, he says. Australian winemakers and show judges have been slow to accept overtly fruity rieslings from a purist point of view, but Robin Day wonders whether those who objected remain opposed to refrigeration or pressure fermentation, used universally for much the same reason.

Several wineries are following Orlando’s lead, if the growing number of similar-tasting rieslings is anything to go by. I particularly enjoy the Wolf Blass Gold Label Rhine Riesling, which according to its makers, John Glaetzer and Chris Hatcher, is a blend of the more austere traditional style with a significant enzyme-treated component. Glaetzer loves the character it gives, saying the first wine he made using that technique around five years ago is still looking fresh and lively.

I’m certainly not opposed to enzyme enhancement, for it broadens the spread of quality Australian riesling and gives the consumer the chance to buy very flavoursome rieslings that avoid the otherwise inevitable dip. I’m certain, though, that much of the best and longer-living Australian riesling will be made by more conventional means. And therefore it’s going to take a little more understanding. Please login to post comment