Pictures: Summer of Riesling at RN74 in Seattle, USA July 21 to September 21 is the Summer of Riesling period: Participating restaurants and wine bars offer a special selection of Rieslings by the glass. I was in Seattle during that period (for the 4. Riesling Rendezvous) and checked out the Summer of Riesling in Seattle.
Six restaurants participate this year: Bastille Cafe and Bar, RN74, Stoneburner, Ten Mercer, Von Trapp's, Wild Ginger. My favorite was: RN 74, with Wild Ginger closely behind. Unfortunately, Purple does not participate this year. Along with Wild Ginger and RN74, Purple has the best wine list in town.
Summer of Riesling
The Summer of Riesling is the brainchild of New York City’s Riesling Guru Paul Grieco, from Hearth Restaurant and the Terroir Winebars. In addition, there is the 31 Days of German Riesling - As part of the Summer of Riesling, during the month of July, participating restaurants and retailers are focusing on German Riesling.
See here:
Summer of Riesling with Annette and Christian Schiller in Washington DC, USA
The Summer of Riesling concept was created in 2008 when Paul Grieco decided that during the summer the ONLY white wine that Terroir customers could get was Riesling. The following years the Summer of Riesling expanded in various ways, initially by enlisting other Manhattan wine bars as part of the celebration and adding a concert where the only alcoholic beverage available was Riesling—no beer, no spirits. In 2011 Paul took the Summer of Riesling national, with support from the International Riesling Foundation (IRF), an organization specifically created to promote Rieslings from around the world.
The Summer of Riesling - in Paul Grieco o-tone:
“What is it? - a love affair with the world's greatest grape expressed in full Technicolor.
Why? - because we must overcome this hackneyed belief that the glorious diversity of Riesling is also a fault...simply put, no grape can do what the Riesling grape can do.
Where? - every corner of the globe where wine is available.
When? - from June 21st to September 21st (we ain't kidding when we call it the Summer of Riesling!).
How? - by bringing everyone together and handing them a glass of Riesling and engaging them in conversation, with the thrust of the dialogue centering on:
Balance...of bone-crunching acidity and potential sweetness
Complexity...like a conversation with Jeffrey Sachs
Delicacy...as if Benjamin Millepied was dancing across your tongue
Longevity...suffice it to say, Moses lived a brief life compared to bottles of this wine
Sense of Place...even Bigfoot's footprint cannot encapsulate all the terroir that Riesling contains”
Riesling
Worldwide, there are about 34.000 hectares planted with Riesling. Germany – with 22.400 hectares – accounts for 2/3 of the total. The second largest Riesling producer is Australia, with 4500 hectares. But this is only about 1/10 of the total. Alsace follows with 3500 hectares.
Austria, the US with Washington State and New York State as well as New Zealand make up the remainder. But overall, Riesling is really a niche wine, accounting for only less than 1 percent of total wine production in the world - but a very special niche wine.
Dry and Sweet Riesling
Many wine drinkers, in particular outside of Europe, when they see a Riesling in the shelves, have the association of a sweet-style wine. This is however misguided. Rieslings as a rule are dry wines. Of course, there are the famous sugar sweet Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, Eiswein and Schilfwein wines from Austria and Germany, the Sélection de Grains Nobles from France, the icewines from Canada and other Rieslings, made from botrytized, dried or frozen grapes.
The grapes that go into these wines have such a high sugar content that there is nothing you can do to make dry wines out of these grapes. They inevitably produce nobly sweet wines. But apart from these specialty wine, which account for only a tiny share of total production, Riesling grapes in Germany, Austria, Alsace, the US and Australia have normal sugar content at the time of fermentation and tend to produce dry wines, when fully fermented.
However, modern cellar methods allow winemakers in Germany (and elsewhere) to produce wines with a bit of residual sugar with these grapes. These are exceptional wines, essentially made by not letting the fermentation going its full course so that natural sugar remains in the wine. Alternatively, German winemakers are allowed to add sweet-reserve (sterilized grape juice) to increase the sweetness level in the wine, but today, this is mostly done, if at all, for fine tuning the residual sweetness. These fruity-sweet wines are the wines that are so popular among the fans of German wine in the world. These sweet-style wines have lost popularity in Germany, although there appears to be a comeback, but in any case remain very popular outside of Germany, for example in the US.
Anyway, at the 4th Riesling Rendezvous in Seattle earlier this year, Steffen Christmann, VDP President (Germany’s elite winemakers) and owner of Weingut A. Christmann estimated that “if you exclude the wines that cost less than Euro 15, I would think 95% of German wine is dry today.”
Summer of Riesling at RN74
RN74 belongs to the Michael Mina restaurant group. There are 2 RN74s, one in San Francisco and one in Seattle. “RN74 is an urban wine bar and restaurant by Michael Mina, Rajat Parr and Adam Sobel featuring modern interpretations of refined American and regional French cuisine with an extensive wine list highlighting the Burgundy region.
For the RN74 in San Francisco, see here:
When I went there, RN74 had the following Rieslings by the glass:
RIESLING, BERGSTROM, WILLAMETTE VALLEY, OREGON 2009 $11
RIESLING, STE. MICHELLE EROICA, COLUMBIA VALLEY, WASHINGTON 2012 $11
RIESLING, GINGLINGER CUVEE DREI EXE, ALSACE, FRANCE 2010 $12
RIESLING, MAXIMIN GRUNHAUS TROCKEN, RUWER, GERMANY 2010 $15
RIESLING, ROBERT WEIL, RHEINGAU, GERMANY 2008 $15
RIESLING, DR. LOOSEN 'BERNKASTELER LAY' KABINETT, MOSEL, GERMANY 2012 $16
I chose: Eroica, Robert Weil and Maximin Gruenhaus. All three wines were excellent examples of what the Riesling grape can produce.
Eroica - made jointly by Chateau Ste, Michelle and Dr. Loosen - always has a distinct note of raisin on the nose and was smoother and softer than the 2 German Rieslings - a fine wine.
I had tasted the 2010 Maximin Gruenhaus with owner Carl von Schubert a few weeks ago in Washington DC, when he passed through: “The estate Riesling Trocken (dry) is a blend of the barrels that remain after the single-vineyard dry wines have been selected out of the overall production. The result is an entry-level dry Riesling that shows the characteristic minerality of the area and the refined style of the Grünhaus estate.”
Robert Weil Riesling: With grapes from other than the 3 top Weil vineyards (Graefenberg, Turmberg and Klosterberg, all of them grand cru and premier cru vineryards) , fully fermented in stainless steel, crisp, fresh and dry, an excellent Gutswein, i.e. entry-level wine.
Picture: Christian G.E. Schiller and Wilhelm Weil, Weingut Robert Weil, in Kiedrich. Weingut Weil belongs to the group of winemakers that make both dry and fruity-sweet wines, in addition to noble-sweet wines. See: Visiting Wilhelm Weil at his Weingut Robert Weil in Kiedrich, Germany. And: Tasting with Wilhelm Weil the 2010 Weingut Weil Wines in Kiedrich, Germanyschiller-wine - Related Postings
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