Page Three of Food Friendly Wines: Riesling

 

Good Food Partners: Vegetarian dishes; quiche; seafood; shellfish; sushi; sashimi; seviche; smoked salmon; fish or chicken with cream sauce; roasted chicken; Chinese cuisine, including dim sum; curries and other Indian dishes; other Asian cuisines; Caribbean; Mexican; goose; veal; ham; pork; choucroute garnie; sweetbreads; salads; barbecue; mild cheeses; sweeter Rieslings with spicy or sweet Asian (Chinese, Thai), Middle Eastern and Latin American cuisine (see my story "Beyond Beer: The Best Wines to Accompany Chinese Food”); sweetest Rieslings, including Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein, with desserts

Recommended Wines

These wines are from some of Germany’s best producers located in some of its best Riesling-producing regions: Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Nahe, Pfalz and Rheinhessen (Rheingau is another). 2007 is an excellent vintage. The weather was so good that cellarmaster Norbert Breit of Wegeler says he couldn’t have done a better job if he controlled the weather himself. For more information about German wines, see www.rudiwiest.com.

2006 S.A. Prüm Essence QbA (Mosel)

2006 Prinz Zu Salm-Dalberg Two Princes QbA (Nahe)

2007 Mönchhof Riesling Estate (Mosel)

2007 Dr. Bürklin-Wolf Riesling Estate (Pfalz)

2007 Gunderloch Jean-Baptiste Kabinett (Rheinhessen)

2007 Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett (Mosel)

2007 Darting Dürkheimer Nonnengarten Kabinett (Pfalz)

2007 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Schlossberg Spätlese(Mosel)

2007 Dr. H. Thanisch Bernkasteler Lay Auslese (Mosel)

Alsace has just had a long run of excellent vintages. 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007 were all outstanding.

2005 Albert Boxler Réserve

2005 Pierre Sparr Réserve

2006 Paul Blanck

2001 Trimbach Cuvée Frédéric Emile

2004 Hugel Jubilée

Austria’s signature white wine is Grüner Veltliner, but it also makes excellent dry Rieslings.

2006 Höpler Burgenland

 Some of Australia’s best Rieslings, which are typically bone dry, are imported by John Larchet of The Australian Premium Wine Collection (see my story “The Name on the Back of the Bottle: Wine Importers You Can Rely On”). In 2006 Decanter magazine praised Jeffrey Grosset as one of the Top 10 white winemakers in the world.

2006 Rocky Gully Dry

2007 Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge

2006 Grosset Polish Hill

 Dr. Konstantin Frank’s New York winery has been chosen greatest wine producer in the Atlantic Northeast for four years in a row by Tom Stevenson’s annual Wine Report guide.

2006 Dr. Konstantin Frank Dry Riesling

The always entertaining Randall Grahm — he staged a mock funeral for the cork in 2002 — is now specializing in Rieslings from Washington at his new Pacific Rim winery (see the excellent www.rieslingrules.com). 2007 is the first vintage for its single-vineyard Wallula wines.

Pacific Rim Dry Riesling NV

Pacific Rim Sweet Riesling NV

2007 Wallula Vineyard

2007 Biodynamic Wallula Vineyard (it’s interesting to try the Wallula Vineyard wines side by side to see the difference biodynamic viticulture can make)

Washington’s Chateau Ste. Michelle, the largest producer of Riesling in the US, and Germany’s Dr. Loosen collaborate on this excellent Riesling.  

2006 Chateau Ste. Michelle-Dr. Loosen Eroica

California’s highly regarded Clos du Bois made this good-value Riesling.

2007 Clos du Bois

 

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Award-winning author and certified sommelier Sharon Kapnick has written about food and wine for many magazines, including Time, Portfolio, Food & Wine and Hemispheres, and many newspapers, thanks to the New York Times Syndicate. She contributed several entries for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.