The Riesling Predicament

ONE The Riesling Predicament very very good wine is a trifecta of gated by human intervention. Varieties have E variety, place, and style. Variety, of course, been with us more or less as long as people refers to the wine’s varietal composition. Place have made wine and cultivated grapes, but they denotes the wine’s geographic origin. And style were not an object of systematic attention or a is shorthand for most other factors, such as key element in wine nomenclature until fairly whether the wine was made still or sparkling, recently. Familiar as varietal names now appear heady or light, sweet or dry. These three param- to wine consumers around the world, ranging eters are kaleidoscopically interwoven and sub- through the alphabet from Albariño to Zinfan- tly interdependent, but in the end they all deter- del, most varieties were not segregated in vine- mine a wine’s individual properties—from yards, made monovarietally, or featured on color, strength, structure, taste, and smell to wine labels until the past 150 or so years. And reputation, cost, price, and suitability. the science that has finally begun to make The pages that follow discuss one wine sense of the large universe of varieties, and to grape variety, Riesling, made as monovarietal reveal parental and sibling relationships among wine, grown in dozens of different sites across them, developed only in the 1990s. Today at the Northern Hemisphere, and vinified so that least 1,400 wine grape varieties are known to the finished wine is dry. Before we begin this be present in the world’s commercial vineyards, exploration of specifics, a bit more attention to and each has been genetically fingerprinted the wine’s background is appropriate. and is distinguishable from all others. While this number seems enormous at first blush, the count would be considerably higher if varieties VARIETY grown noncommercially or experimentally In the universe of wine grapes, varieties are in were added in, along with varieties present only fact cultivars—natural seedling progeny of in conservatory collections or known to have cross-pollinated parent vines chosen and propa- existed in the past but not to have survived. 7 Haeger - 9780520962163.indd 7 27/07/15 4:58 PM And this figure does not include the varieties— lages, towns, administrative districts, or ports not cultivars—that existed only for the lifetime of embarkation. In this context, no feature of of a single vine plant that was never chosen or the land where grapes are farmed is, or ever propagated by a curious farmer. was, prima facie irrelevant to the wine pro- On the other hand, the number of varieties duced. Certainly, a site’s latitude and climate that have attracted widespread, significant, and are relevant, as well as its elevation, orientation, sustained interest from winegrowers and there- aspect, proximities, and exposures; the physical fore are grown today in many corners of the and chemical properties of its dirt and even the global vineyard—varieties generally known as microflora in it; and the uses imposed on classic, major, or international—amount to only neighboring land. As the legendary English a few dozen. This list, largely a product of Euro- wine writer Hugh Johnson is supposed to have pean immigration to the New World in the 19th summarized it, “In the case of wine, where it century, expands from time to time as Euro- comes from is the whole point” (quoted in Blan- pean varieties of hitherto only local interest are ning 2009). discovered by New World vintners and trans- In recent decades, much of the conversation planted. Consider the sagas of Vermentino and about place and wine has invoked the French Grüner Veltliner, for example, barely known word terroir. Print appearances of the word are 20 years ago outside their habitats around now so ubiquitous that it is rarely italicized in the Tyrrhenian Sea and in Austria, respectively, English; whole books have been written about but now looking suspiciously international. But terroir by geologists and plant scientists, and no the converse trend is stronger: already-domi- issue of any wine magazine, in any European nant varieties such as Chardonnay are more language, is terroir-free. Never mind that the widely planted everywhere, largely because word itself, in anything approximating its cur- nothing succeeds like success and thus these rent meaning, is younger than the Industrial varieties make eminent economic sense. Mean- Revolution and has been used to denote the while, less-visible varieties are abandoned and “somewhereness” of individual wines for barely disappear. a century. Individual commentators and winegrowers have permitted themselves personal and sometimes idiosyncratic redefinitions of PLACE the word. Grosso modo, terroir is modern short- If our contemporary preoccupation with grape hand for the imprint of site-specific properties varieties, our growing knowledge of varieties on individual wines. The word has evolved into and their relationships, and our increasing reli- an umbrella term that subsumes everything ance on varietal names for the taxonomies of mysterious about the properties of wine, and it wine have made variety seem to be the primary is now a touchstone for everyone who contends, element in the trifecta of excellent wine, place as many do, that all very good wine is made in deserves at least as much attention, and argua- the vineyard, not in the cellar. bly more. Until the past century, wine taxonomies were overwhelmingly geographical, not STYLE varietal, because as early as Roman times, we had recognized that regions and sites differ Style, the third part of the trifecta, is less famil- from one another, even if our understanding of iar to wine consumers than variety or terroir. It the science of differences was imperfect. The is also more troubled territory, but no less names of wines were the names of vineyards or important for its handicaps. It has recently vineyard blocks, themselves often derived from attracted attention in spite of itself as ultraripe physical, cultural, or ecological features of the flavors and concomitant increases in alcohol landscape or chose as references to nearby vil- content, especially in New World red wines, 8 chapter one Haeger - 9780520962163.indd 8 27/07/15 4:58 PM have provoked pushback from many sommel- pressing. Whether botrytis is present, and iers and some wine writers, and as barrel-fer- whether botrytis-affected clusters are kept sep- mented Chardonnays, redolent of oak, butter, arate from the rest. Whether the juice is clari- and vanilla and kissed with residual sweetness, fied before fermentation or afterward, or both. have become so ubiquitous that many consum- Whether the fermentation environment is ers erroneously think of these attributes as heated, chilled, or otherwise modified. How properties of the grape variety itself. The push- much contact is permitted between juice and back is illustrated by the creation, in 2011, of an skins and between new wine and lees. Whether organization called In Pursuit of Balance, the fermentation is deliberately interrupted, which focuses on encouraging “balance” in left to itself, or encouraged to consume all avail- California winemaking, especially as it affects able sugar. Whether anything is added to the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and by the publica- wine, briefly or permanently, to flavor it, alter tion of a book by San Francisco Chronicle wine its natural chemistry, deactivate bacteria, or editor Jon Bonné celebrating winemakers “who prevent secondary fermentation. And, in the are “rewriting the rules of contemporary wine- time since distillation was “invented,” whether making by picking grapes earlier and seeking the wine is fortified, or, in very recent years, to reduce alcoholic strength” (Bonné 2013). whether some of the alcohol produced by fer- Although the object of attention in both cases is mentation was removed. Style-based choices wine style, the s-word itself is barely mentioned have been part and parcel of viniculture at least in language that concentrates instead on the since classical antiquity, ceaselessly reflecting “promotion of varietal characteristics” and on the status of wine among other drinks, the ebb varieties as “vehicles for the expression of ter- and flow of consumer tastes, and the determi- roir,” per In Pursuit of Balance’s website. Win- native effect of consumer preferences and valu- emakers themselves seem uncomfortable with ations on markets. the idea that style is an essential parameter of wine, endlessly repeating the catechism that RIESLING very good wine “makes itself” as long as the grapes have been properly grown. In these Vintners and wine writers widely agree that pages, I argue the converse: style is everything Riesling, the object of attention in these pages, about wine that is neither terroir (mediated is an important international variety. It occu- through viticulture) nor variety, and it is the pies a total of more than 50,000 hectares world- outcome of a long list of winemaking choices. wide, overwhelmingly in the Northern Hemi- Some relationship always exists, of course, both sphere, but it is also solidly anchored in the logically and empirically, between the expres- antipodes. It is grown on every wine-producing sion of place and the way a wine is made; win- continent, in at least a dozen European coun- emaking is critical to very good wines, and it is tries, and in no fewer than nine American a conscious, thoughtful, and usually beneficial states and three Canadian provinces. While symbiosis with raw material. Nevertheless, Chardonnay, a variety that has become almost style is different from both variety and terroir. synonymous with white wine in much of the Style begins with the protocol that governs wine-drinking world, beats Riesling in terms of the harvest. This includes such factors as surface planted almost four to one, Riesling is whether the vineyard is picked in a single pass, almost as widespread as Pinot Gris and more for example, or several times to segregate fruit than three times as widely planted as Chenin of different maturities; how mature the grapes Blanc.

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