German rieslings

[KNorthrup]

I just finished David Rosengarten's Taste and dry German Reislings are his favourite wine with food. He includes 4 dense pages on understanding the labels, particularly in terms of sweet vs dry, and other things to look for. If he still has a website, there's probably quite a bit of information there too. Supplier recommendations he makes are importers Terry Theise on the East coast and Rudy Weist on the west, and The Age of Riesling in Berkeley for direct mail order. He also lists ten specific wineries but that could be getting into copyright issues to post.

[slkinsey]

Good information or riesling also in The Wine Avenger by Willie Gluckstern who is, among other things, affiliated with the excellent Nancy's Wines on Columbus at 75th Street (NYC).

[KatieLoeb]

Good information or riesling also in The Wine Avenger by Willie Gluckstern who is, among other things, affiliated with the excellent Nancy's Wines on Columbus at 75th Street (NYC).

I took a wine class with Willie Gluckstern. Interesting fellow and very passionate about price/value ratio in his wine purchases.

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to check out the wine shop next time I'm in New York!

[slkinsey]

Good information or riesling also in The Wine Avenger by Willie Gluckstern who is, among other things, affiliated with the excellent Nancy's Wines on Columbus at 75th Street (NYC).

I took a wine class with Willie Gluckstern. Interesting fellow and very passionate about price/value ratio in his wine purchases.

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to check out the wine shop next time I'm in New York!

Nancy's is a cool place. Their whole philosophy is to sell undervalued wines that go great with food. This is one of the reasons riesling is so great. It is probably the greatest white wine grape there is (especially for food), and yet most people in America don't really know about it so you can almost always get a truly great bottle for around $10/bottle. Barbera is another great wine that Willie/Nancy's turned me on to.

[tommy]

Nancy's is a cool place.  Their whole philosophy is to sell undervalued wines that go great with food.

and they claim that there's not a bad bottle in the store. that is to say, the think every wine in there is pretty damned good. i love that store, and willie's book.

[Jean Fisch]

A couple of comments about German wines:

QmP means wines with certain level of sugar ripeness (the required levels for Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese , etc. vary by region) and do limit the things one can do during fermentation (no chaptalization, only sweetening via sussreserve, etc.).

QmP wines are technically not required to indicate Trocken or Halb-Trocken if they do not exceed the required RS levels (these are set by law, and are slightly different by regions). But all producers i know indicate their QmP wines as Trocken or Halb-Trocken when this is the case. SO there shouldn't really be a problem.

The "problem" is with the non QmP wines: here it is not necessary to indicate the whether it is a trocken or sweet. And the trick of looking at the degree of alc., knowing the wine maker, etc. helps.

Side comment: Yes Eiswein has also a sugar level requirement - it is essentially the same as that for BA in the region (and of course varies per region). Before the law of 1971, Eiswein was just a designation (totally free, non defined, etc.) of the fact that some wines have seen some ice. You could have Eiswein Auslese, Eiswein Feinste Auslese, Beerenauslese and even Eiswein Trockenbeerenauslese!

Edited July 5, 2003 by Jean Fisch (log)