It's time for another installment of 'Steve's Wine World', musings from Steve Michener about the grape varietals selected at Trio Vintners.
Riesling gets a bad rap in the wine world. At least it does here in the U.S. and A. Over in Europe it has long been considered the most noble of grapes. However, winemakers in Washington are working hard to change the public perception of the wine made from the Riesling grape and we are right there with them. Here at Trio Vintners we are making it our primary white wine grape. And here's why:
I think the main reason people turn up their nose at Riesling is the dreadful jug wine that flowed into this country in the latter part of the 20th century. Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun were sickly sweet blends of German wines and they turned a lot of people off to the idea of Riesling (ironically, both of those wines were mostly made from Muller-Thurgau grapes). The high-quality German Rieslings rarely made it across the ocean. Much like thin Chianti bottled in the straw fiasco bottles, the thought of Riesling left a bad taste in American consumers' mouths.
Recently, however, there has been a move here in the U.S and especially in Washington and New York States to produce wine that compares favorably with the great German wines. Our climate in Washington allows us to compete--we have warm days with cool nights which combine to give lots of flavors to the fruit and then seal in the acids at night. The soils here are well-drained and there is little rainfall so the grower can moderate the amount of water the vines take up. One interesting note about Riesling from a farming standpoint: while most quality wine grapes give the best flavors when cropped to about three tons of fruit per acre, the Riesling grape seems to give its best flavors at about five to six tons. That's a more profitable position for the grape-growers and grape-buyers alike.
So now you're saying, "Sure, but the Rieslings I've had are all too sweet". I think that most of the Rieslings today are done in a sweeter style (where the fermentation is stopped before the wine is dry leaving a fair amount of residual sugar ) but there are also the off-dry and dry styles that are worth seeking out. These leave just enough sugar to balance the bright acids or no sugar at all, leaving you with just the tart, tropical fruit the varietal is known for.
Our grapes come from the acclaimed Lewis vineyard in the Yakima Valley. Although it is better known for its Syrah we think it is a pretty special place for this varietal as well. The fruit came in with a pH around 3.0 which is very acidic for wine grapes. As we crushed it at Buty Winery we couldn't stop dipping our glass into the press-well for another taste. I would love to just filter and bottle this juice without letting it ferment sometime. It makes the supermarket juice made from Niagra and Concord grapes taste sick. After we crushed it we put it in a tank and trucked it over to WW Community College where our erstwhile instructor Mike Moyer had agreed to lend us a tank to ferment in. With this wine it is important to keep it chilled to about 50 degrees during fermentation so that you don't lose any of the delicate aromas in the grapes.
It had a long slow fermentation in the tank and we also had a carboy of about 5 gallons that fermented itself using the natural yeasts in the vineyard (as opposed to the laboratory-made yeasts we added to the big tank) and that tasted great too, in a different way. When the sugar level got down to about 2 brix we stopped the fermentation by moving it to another tank and adding SO2 and dropping the temperature down to about 40 degrees. The purpose of those 3 manuevers was to remove a large amount of the yeast that had settled to the bottom of the tank, shock the yeast with SO2 so it couldn't eat any more sugar and chill it to make the temp inhospitable to the yeast. Then we added bentonite to the tank to help with the fining of the wine. The bentonite works to bind to the floating proteins and carry them to the bottom of the tank. Before you add this the wine is cloudy and afterwards it is (mostly) clear.
Now the wine will sit in the tank for about a month and then we will filter it to remove any other impurities in the liquid, blend it with another lot of Reisling we are working on and bottle it. If will finish in a slightly off-dry style that will give you just a hint of sugar to balance out the acids. We are going to be sharing the wine with our friend Joe Forest, the assistant winemaker at Dunham Cellars. He is launching a new venture of his own and this will be his debut wine. He helped us source the grapes, Caleb at Buty helped us with pressing and Mike at the College gave us the space and chilling capability we needed. This is pretty typical of WW wine making: lots of folks helping out and everyone really concerned about the quality of the finished product. We are very lucky to be working in such a supportive environment.
We will start selling this in our tasting room starting in April. Come by and taste a Washington State Riesling. I think we will change your mind about the grape.
Comments