My answer: So what? Since when is quality indicated by acreage? Are we to believe that the grape Airen (of which there are over 250,000 hectares planted and which is responsible for lakes of neutral, dull wine – but which also forms the basis for distillation into delightful brandies) belongs to the highest-quality wine grapes simply because of how much of the stuff is planted? Please. Riesling is only at 18 th place on the world listing of important grapes by planting, with half of the total vine plantings being found in Germany (worldwide 50,000 hectares). Sorry Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Volkswagen…looks like you’re a bit overrated. Germany, in such a ranking, comes in fourth. Second, the importance of a grape is not, in fact, dependant on its presence and/or importance in the vineyards of the three largest winegrowing nations any more than a ranking in the top three by production qualifies car making nations as important.But also the vineyards of Northern Italy have Riesling planted in enough density to warrant attention. Alsace is famous for its Riesling, and with good reason. If you are going to discount the importance of Riesling in Alsace, then you had better be prepared to lay yourself down in that Procrustean Bed you have just made. Riesling is found in the vineyards of all three nations listed, and is even significant in those of two: Italy and France. That’s a load of crap for at least two important reasons. In the vineyards of the three largest winegrowing nations in the world: France, Spain and Italy, Riesling plays no role.” “One cannot speak of a global victory march of Riesling. Ahem.īut before I continue to build my case on the similarities between Riesling and Nebbiolo, please humour me while I attempt to undermine some of the arguments and statements found in the article. Spoiler alert, look at where those three wines are made. I’m going to refer to one grape – a grape used to make some of the noblest wines we have – a number of times from here on out, so here it is: ever heard of Nebbiolo? Well I hope you have, since it is responsible for some of the world’s most expensive and most long-lived wines: Barolo, Barbaresco – even Gattinara – but if you haven’t, now you know. But it most certainly is not alone in this regard in the wine world – not even among the great wines of the world. Moreso than perhaps ever before, in fact.
Yes, of course Riesling is a niche product. The thesis of the article is this: Riesling is a niche product whose quality is not as high as we think, because it isn’t widely-planted and prices for its wines are not high enough. I’ll go into some of the main points in a moment. And, as you may have discerned, it made me angry.
And I had a few Germans read it as well, to make sure that my impressions were correct, and not the simple result of some embarrassing miscomprehension. My annoyance with the title came after I read the article.īut I read the article several times. Okay, no idea that it is about Riesling just yet. The title: “Sobering Facts about a Niche Product”.
You can find the original article (in German) here. Also, a fine example of German navel-gazing if ever there was one. Infuriating, and, sometimes, simply wrong. An interestingly infuriating article, as it turns out – from the title to the content and finishing up with the conclusions. So the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) just printed an article by Oliver Bock dealing with the Riesling Symposium that recently took place at Kloster Eberbach in the Rheingau.