This is my knee-jerk suggestion as well, if I don’t trust the bottle, I bring it into my lab. Hell, if you’re that worked up about it but don’t have a full lab, you can send it out to someone else for a full analysis!
I had an in depth conversation on this topic with a very passionate Riesling winemaker two weeks ago… His frustration mirrored yours, and his takeaway was the only way to return the compass needle to honesty on what’s in the bottle is label your sugar/TA content, no more sliding scale!
Exactly what I was thinking.
Not sure why so many are jumping on your back for what, to me, is a legit gripe for a wine labelled explicitly as “bone dry”. I like Rieslings of all sweetness levels at different times, but I’m super pissed if I open one expecting it to be dry and it’s got any perceptible RS.
In any case, here are some rather dry Rieslings with what I’d call bracing acidity:
-Julien Schaal Alsace Grands Crus that K&L brings in. I’ve had the Sommerberg Granite, not the others. I was irritated with the price hike from the tariffs, but they’re still under $30.
-Red Newt from the Finger Lakes has some very dry Rieslings. (Their Cab Franc rosé is amazing, too.) My CT note on a 2012 single block Riesling was: Wow. Laser-like acidity, despite the 1.6% RS. Lemon, mineral, and lots of acid. Quite good.
-Sybille Kuntz from the Mosel makes trocken Riesling at a variety of ripeness levels. I’ve only had the Kabinett trocken so far, but have a bottle of Spätlese trocken to try as well.
-Te Whare Ra from NZ also makes a dry Riesling that twice I’ve now commented is truly dry. K&L brings this in also.
-You’d probably also have some luck with Riesling from Niagara. I’ve never had one there labelled “dry” that I ever thought was otherwise. Cave Spring and Featherstone come to mind.
-Müller-Grossmann from Kremstal, Austria also was very dry.
i think it is just a bit uninformed to expect a riesling, even if classified as dry to have zero residual sugar. trimbach’s cuvee frederic emile is about as dry tasting as it comes for the grape imo, and the rs is all over the place depending on vintage. for instance the 2000 has 5 g/l while the 2007 has .07 g/l rs. even the clos ste hune has 7.59 g/l in 2012. i doubt an experienced taster would claim these wines are anything but dry. not to mention, aiming for a target number year in year out would just be a poor winemaking decision.
I didn’t see a comment on this, but could your aromatic perception of sweetness be the issue? You can’t smell sweet, but that fruity aroma can have a dramatic effect on your perception. There are bone-dry wines that people think are sweet.
It would be nice to see the actual RS of this wine.
I absolutely agree that if the wine isn’t truly bone dry, the scale on the label shouldn’t be pegged to the left. There are zero RS Rieslings, so implying that one is when it isn’t would be deceptive.
On the other hand, many truly dry rieslings are hard to recognize as riesling because they have little or none of the fruity aromas we associate with the grape – just faint minerally note.
Jamie Goode wrote something saying that the reason is that, when there is significant amount of sugar in a wine, fruit esters come out of solution very quickly, giving the wine a powerful aroma.
That’s interesting. Though also, some fruity aromas aren’t esters and there’s all sorts of other stuff at play. Note that Adam said he’s fine with some at .9 and 1.0. It depends on the wine, but a typical non-musky non-Riesling seems dry at about 1.0. Fermenting a wine dry, where it stops on its own and tastes dry can often have a little sugar, as well as unfermentable sugar. My experience with dozens of varieties, as well as some fruit wines, doesn’t show it normal that a wine fermented dry would be mute in aroma. I can see someone picking for a dry Riesling on the early side, looking for a lower final ABV to keep things in balance, and getting a very austere wine. I’ve had Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Muscat and Viognier like that. Perhaps sugar would bring out the aromas. But, I’ve also had bone-dry normally ripe versions of those that were very aromatically expressive. My experience adding sugar is with fruit wines. Fermented dry, then sweetened to taste. Many are stern, harsh, out of balance bone dry. Sugar is more to balance things out, and to meet sweetness expectations of the fruit, but also adds body to the palate and nose. Not sure anything is added to the nose, as they’re quite expressive, but the breadth of what’s there is expanded.
The only example at moderate ripeness that goes the other way that I can think of was my Tinta Cao. Wimpy wimpy wimpy. It’s a blending grape for aromatics. Not much there all along. I got enough of its pretty floral character when I racked it to get an idea what its about, but not much there. I test blended in a little Touriga Nacional and it exploded. That added body, acid, tannin, complexity, bringing it up to a light red. At 20%, the Touriga is definitely there, but that very different Tinta Cao florality is much more prominent and very pretty. If it wasn’t being “brought out” by something, it would be dwarfed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the TN had much higher RS than the TC, and would actually expect it, but it couldn’t have been more than 1.0.
Carlisle and WT Vintners are quite good.
I have had the Carlisle. Meh.
Definitely not Pichler, only had 2011 Steiner, so cooler vintage probably helped it shine, but was really good.
I have had the Carlisle three times, and prefer the entry level Schloss Gobelsburg ‘Gobelsburger’ Grüner Veltliner for less money.
Me too. Also dislike the sweet Riesling. And the stuff in the middle. And all points in between. I just came in for the rant. ![[popcorn.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/1/1ca9f29573458cca2424a66a50d6c1261081dd3e.gif "[popcorn.gif]"){kind=small}
I’m not sure that Goode limited it to esters.
Still, I’ve had lots of very dry rieslings – mostly German and Austrian, some Alsatian, and some from other regions – that were lovely wines but had none of the highly aromatic, fruity aromas characteristic of even slightly sweet rieslings, or only faint, faint traces of those. And Alsatian and Austrian rieslings tend to be pretty full bodied wines made from fairly ripe grapes. There’s more variation among the Germans in ripeness/body/alcohol.
I can’t speak to KJ specifically. But if you take box wine Chardonnays from the big brands - these are wines that have pretty consistent core chemistry (alcohol, pH, TA, free and total SO2, malic acid, glucose+fructose) and so are widely used as method validators by in-house winery labs - it is common to see 5-10 g/l RS.
Adam, I love your wines, but I am not sure I’d want to try a Riesling made by you!
As far as bone-dry, as others have pointed out, the left of the scale is still a range, so without actual RS numbers, you are never going to know what you’ll get. I have two suggestions at opposite ends of the price spectrum (though the higher one is just because I know the producer’s other wines which are clearly “Trocken,” but “Trocken” meaning less than dry for you.
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Zind-Humbrecht, their basic Riesling Turckheim. The RS is usually just above 1 g (and their website is good about listing info for the past ten vintages).
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At the high end: 2017 Bürklin-Wolf Ungeheur G.C. I don’t know if it is always this dry, but that year is 0.7g RS (https://www.buerklin-wolf.de/files/standardtheme/images/Downloads/2017%20Ungeheuer%20G.C_.pdf) (In German). Of course, I see it runs $90 or so. To me, Bürklin-Wolf produces dry wines, but the lesser sites I know have more RS, though still within what many, including myself, consider dry.
I agree that quite a few wines (Riesling et al) are indicated incorrectly reg. taste/sweetness, in Alsace as well as in Germany - and I say that as being German.
You should complain to the importer - or better still to the producer, which shouldn´t be any problem nowadays via internet.
Please explain why the OP singles out Riesling.
Ignorance?
I have had plenty of bone dry Rieslings aged between 2 and 40 years
And many “dry” red and white wines made from other varieties with identifiable RS
I agree on Grüner I have had many from all over the U.S., Italy and even one or two from Germany and none have come even close to a basic Grüner from Austria.
Hi Adam
If you can find it try the dry Rieslings from Weingut Tesch in the Nahe. Dr. Martin Tesch is strongly anti RS in his dry Riesling wines.
K
What percentage of the wines in the WORLD truly have < 2g/L RS? You would struggle to find much wine with that metric, much less Riesling.