Let's talk about Rieslings

I know it's been a while since my last post. My apologies. It's been a hectic couple of months and now I'm back in Italy. At least for another few weeks.
Last night I attended a tasting dinner which featured Thai food paired with German Rieslings. In Vancouver you can find Thai restaurants on practically every corner. That isn't the case here in Lucca thus making the dinner a bit more unique.

Rieslings have been the go to wine to pair with Asian cooking for a while. It's very difficult to pair Asian cusine not only because of the spices and sauces but also how it's served. You get several dishes served all at once and each dish has it's own unique flavour. This makes wine pairing a challenge.

The problem I find back home is finding a really good Riesling. Most of the ones I've tried tend to be too sweet. Rieslings are a sweeter wine but a good Riesling will balance that sweetness with acidity. This balance works very well with Asian cuisine.

Without getting into a mini-course on Rieslings, I just want to give you some basic guidelines when looking at German Rieslings. This will help you understand the labels that much better. German wine categories are based on a ripeness scale. Tafelwein (literally table wine), QbA and QmP. QbA wines are everyday, inexpensive quaffing wines. QmP wines are the highest class of German wines and these in turn have 6 sub-categories based on ascending degrees of ripeness. No sugar can be added to QmP wines unlike wines in the QbA category. The ripeness scale is as follows, starting with the least ripe, Kabinett, Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein (literally Ice Wine).

Kabinetts are probably the most food friendly, Spatleses are late-harvest wines with more strength and intensity than Kabinetts. Ausleses are made only in the best years from very ripe grapes, and the final three categories are all very intense and usually expensive due to the low production.

All the wines we tasted last night were from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer wine region. This is the Napa Valley of Germany. The wines from this area are considered better than all the rest. We started with Pad Thai which was paired with a Markus Molitor 2007 Kabinett Zeltingen Sonnenuhr. Zeltingen is the village the wine came from and Sonnenuhr is the vineyard name. This wine was 7.5% alc/vol and was very round with some sweetness but not a cloying sweetness. This paired very nicely with the Pad Thai.











Next came Chicken in Green Curry Coconut Sauce and a Spicy Basil Pork. A St Urbans Hof Oekonomierat Nic Weis 2006 Kabinett Ockfener Brockstein was served. Ockfener is the village and Brockstein is the vineyard. This was 9% alc/vol and was much more mineral than the Markus Molitor. It also had a hint of kerosene smell in the nose. This is a good thing in a Riesling. Not at all a defect. In fact, Kerosene is one of the characteristics of Rieslings. Kind of like Cat Pee in Sauvignon Blanc. I really enjoyed this wine with the dish. It worked really well.

The Sea Bass in Chili Sauce and Garlic Pepper Prawns came next. With this a Willi Schaefer 2003 Spatlese Graacher Domprobst was paired. Graacher is the village and Domprobst the vineyard. We've moved into a richer category now with a Spatlese, also an older wine (2003). The wine was more intense in color and smelled a bit like lamp oil (also a good thing). There is a nice balance of sweetness and acidity in this wine. Willi Schaefer is a very good Riesling producer. This wine was 7.5% alc/vol. Also served at the same time was a Winninger Hann Spatlese 2006 Feinherb. At 14% alc/vol this wine had a light kerosene nose and a high level of acidity. I prefered the Willi Schaefer of the two with this dish.














To end the evening, we were treated to a 1976 Thornichen Ritlch Sankt Urbans Hof. It was incredibly rich in color and you could smell dried apricots and candied fruit. A nice wine to sip and enjoy.














Hopefully this post will encourage you to try some German Rieslings. In Vancouver there is so much Asian Fusion that finding a reason to try a Riesling won't be too hard. I did check the BC Liquor Store website and the only label they had was the St Urbans Hof. But check the year and the village/vineyard as well as the category (Kabinett, etc). There are many excellent wine shops in Vancouver like Liberty Wines, Sutton Place, Marquis and Everything Wine in North Vancouver. I'm sure with a little research you can find something amazing. Then make sure to let me know if you do.