Riesling is the main squeeze for so many wine lovers because it comes in so many different styles, from bone dry to honey sweet. It can be beautifully aromatic with notes of ripe fruit. Riesling’s high acidity guarantees it will be mouthwatering, a lovely foil for food.

Chicago Tribune

Few pictures from my trip in Germany (Mosel today). What a beautiful place and great Rieslings to taste (not discounting the food either).

I went to see a few great estates such as Selbach Oster, Sankt Urban Hof and Schloss Lieser.

I like to learn about what they do (in the vineyard or at the winery) , why they do it and how this can make a difference in wine quality. I will have a few post in the next few days about what I saw, liked and did not get.

above is a view of the Mosel (Zeltingen in the distance). Below is a row of the Wehlener Sonnenhur from the lower road. Middle is a close up of the slaty soils.

Riesling aroma intensity is highly correlated with the terpenes concentration in the wine. A few other varities are also defined by the terpene concentration such as Muscat or Gewurztraminer (though Muscat and Gewurztraminer are much richer in terpenes). Terpenes are found mainly in the berry skin and tends to accumulate during the course of the ripening season. One major problems for winemakers is that the terpenes are principally chemically bound to grape sugars and are ordorless in that form. To reveal terpene aromas, the sugar-terpenes molecule as to be broken in some fashion and the terpene as to be release, free of some sort. In Riesling only one quarter of total terpenes are freed up during the winemaking process. Activities enhancing the amount of free terpene in a wine include fermentation, time on the lees and bottle aging (the choice of closure is also critical as natural cork and synthetic corks absorb terpenes). During fermentation, yeasts enzymes can release terpenes but unfortunately they do no work very well at low pH which is often the case with Riesling. Some companies sell commercial enzymes to supplement natural yeast activities but such enzymes are not always easy to use (nor very natural) and can lead to an overextracted, almost tacky wine. Lees aging can also promote free terpene content by the release of those enzymes in the wine. Finally, it has been proven that enzymatic activity is possible many years after bottling and generally a Riesling can have increases in free terpene content two or three years after bottling. Unfortunately most Rieslings are consumed well before that. The major terpenes found in Riesling are: Linalool (Rose aroma), Alpha-terpineol (lilac), Citronellol (citronella), Nerol (mandarin), Geraniol (grapefruit) and Hotrienol (Lime).

I know that some of you folks have been curious about our new Autumnus labels for our white blend (Riesling, Chenin Gewurztraminer) and our red blend (Sangiovese, barbera, Primitivo). The art came from real pieces of art from Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) who was an Italian painter known for creating  portrait made entirely of fruit, vegetables and other edible fare (he even did a portrait made out of books). His most famous painting (above) is made of fruit and vegetable and is part of a serie of four self portraits representing the four seasons. The painting, representing Fall, is called “Vertumnus” whom is the god of harvest and bounty in Latin (Fall being also Autumn in english, we gave the name “Autumnus” for our red and white blends).  We love the connection to food, which is exactly why we have crafted those high acid wines for. Here you have it. Arcimboldo was really an iconoclast and very ahead of his time in an era where other artits where mainly painting religious scenes. We like his innovative energy and he is an inspiration to us. Below is a self portrait (without the fruits!) of Arcimboldo:.

How does one shop for wines on a tight budget?…We called three wine shops in different states and asked them what interesting case they would put together…The total budget was $120 and we told the merchants they had to choose from among bottles in the store at the time we called.

wsjonline_july209

I was working on a format to show the level of sweetness of our wines relative to one another. I had the idea of using the taste scale from the International Riesling Foundation. I liked it so much that I thought I would just post it. The wines are lined up from dry to sweet from left to right. Neat way to see the entire range of wine we make isn’t it? It is also a great way to realize that we really make wines at every sugar levels. They are 12 wines above and 7 of them are Rieslings. Cheers!