Not All Riesling’s are Created Equal (or Sweet)

I was out to dinner the other night and searched the wine list for a good accompaniment to what I anticipated to be an awesome sushi dinner.  My target?  A good, DRY Riesling.  I asked the server about a particular selection.  Particularly, if it was on the sweet side.  She responded, without much pause, and said “Riesling’s are generally sweet”.  NOT!!  Now, I’ll subscribe to the notion that Cabernet’s are generally dry, but, as a wine/food server, she needed only a little wine training to know Riesling’s come in varying styles of dryness and sweetness.  And, that’s important when pairing food and wine.  Certainly, a sweet Riesling wouldn’t have been an enjoyable accompaniment to sushi for me.  Kinda like eating fish with ketchup.  I wanted something a little dry and acidic, and not too viscous to cut through the oils of the fish.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like sweet Riesling’s and there are many good one’s out there, but would probably have it with dessert if drinking it with food.

Riesling’s (or any other wine for that matter) obtain their sweetness from the residual sugar in the wine.  Residual sugar is just that, the amount of sugar remaining in the wine after fermentation.  In the U.S., we generally measure it in %.  Some countries measure it in grams.  A dry wine generally has between .5% to 2% residual sugar.  A sweet wine will generally be between 2% up to 6%.  A dessert wine would be above 6%.  Now, the acidity level in the wine can mask the sweetness.  A wine with 2% residual sugar can appear dry on the palate if there are higher acids in the wine.

When wine ferments, the yeast in the wine eats the sugar and the by product is alcohol.  So, when the fermentation process is arrested early, more residual sugar remains in the wine (sweeter wine) and results in a lower alcohol content wine.  Conversely, when the fermentation process is allowed to continue, the result will be a wine with less residual sugar (dryer wine) and a higher alcohol content.  We don’t want to confuse this process with what is used to make Port.  Port is a very sweet wine,  high in alcohol content.  But, Port is fortified with a grape spirit known as Aguardente (and commonly called Brandy) to raise its alcohol content.

General flavor characteristics of Riesling:  Honey-Grapefruit-Melon-Peach.  Also, mineral (slate or limestone) tastes from the soils the vines grow in.

What to look for on the nose:  Floral-Minerals.