Spirit of travel

Discover Germany’s noble grape variety, Riesling

Known as t he wine that winemakers love to drink, Germany’s e mblematic gr a pe, Riesling, has undergone something of a renaissance in the last decade. Underrated for the best part of the 20th century, and unfairly associated with sweet, white cask wine, the classic non-French grape is finally getting the due attention it deserves. The Rhine Valley in Germany’s central-west region is the birthplace of Riesling. This is a fairy-tale land of craggy cliffs, medieval robber-baron castles and quaint wine- growing villages with vertiginous vineyards that rise up from both sides of the river at dizzying angles. These brutally steep terraces of ungrafted vines make for back-breaking work – with many winemakers choosing to hand harvest, like their medieval forefathers. It’s believed that monks in the Rheingau region were cultivating wine varieties in these vineyards as far back as 1392. The first written documentation can be found in cellar log of Count Katzenelnbogen in 1435, who purchased six Riesling vines at a castle near to Hochheim on the Rhine river. Riesling’s evolution continued to be closely aligned with the church. In 1672, St. Clara Monastery in Mainz replaced all of its red wines with

gutes Rissling- Holz ( good Riesling vines), and in 1790, some 294,000 vines were planted in the viticultural Johannisberg Benedictine Monastery. By the late 1800s, German Rieslings were more sought after (and pricier) than Bordeaux’s great reds. The noble grape received the royal seal of approval when Queen Victoria paid a visit to the Rheingau in 1845, and coined the word “hock” – a British term still used today to describe the Rhine’s white wines. By the end of the 19th century, Riesling was the dominant grape in Rheingau. While this bucolic wine region (which dates back to pre-Roman times) may be small, there’s no denying the huge role it played in Germany’s wine history. The area’s sunny, southfacing slopes on the north bank of the Rhine yield mainly dry wines that are distinctively lemony and mineralscented. The famous Mosel region, meanwhile, located along the banks of one of Europe’s other great wine rivers, produces more petrol- like flavours and slatey notes, owing to the soils in this region. The character of Riesling has a clear tether to the wine’s place of origin, spanning the gamut from bone dry to lusciously sweet, and floral undertones to citrus and tropical nuances. This light-skinned aromatic grape does possess a few common traits, such as a pronounced fruity acidity, slowripening, outstanding ageing-potential and naturally light alcohol content (often as low as eight per cent). Another trademark is its mineral accents of quartz, limestone and slate – attributed to the heat-storing, primaryrock soils where the grapes ripen. And then there are very sweet Rieslings or botrytised wines, which owe their intense perfume of exotic fruit to an accidental late harvest in 1775. Legend has it that a messenger carrying the official order to start picking grapes was robbed en route, and arrived weeks later to a rotten harvest. Local peasants resourcefully used the overripe grapes to brew their own wines, with resounding success. Today, select winemakers in the Rhine allow their late-harvest grapes to become deliberately infected by fungus botrytis (so-called “noble rot”) – yielding special wines such as Auslesen and Beerenauslesen . To be sure you are quaffing a “true” Riesling, look out for a “Weisser”, and steer clear of wines l i ke Welschriesling and Italian Riesling, which are, despite the moniker, unrelated varieties of white wine grape.

Schloss Johannisberg