Another convert to Riesling

How fantastic that there is a movement to promote the enjoyment of Riesling. Another movement sweeping the world but one in which the supporters are not setting up cardboard boxes on Wall Street but laying down their picnic blankets on a grassy knoll. No doubt all of us have memories of a moment, a setting or an occasion when we really enjoyed a great meal, a refreshing boutique beer or a special glass of wine.

My mother, who like many kiwi women of the 1980’s, enjoyed her nightly tipple of sherry was converted to Riesling (or rise-ling as she pronounces it) in the late 1990’s while on a trip to Adelaide. While waiting for me to finish class at the University she sat in the elegant Art Gallery cafe on North Terrace surrounded by Rodin sculpture and tried her first glass of Riesling. Whether it was a Clare Valley or Adelaide hills is unknown but it no doubt was a fusion of lime, honey, honeysuckle, oily in texture but with a dry acid finish. She raved about her new found friend so much that I decided to do my premier harvest, 1998, in the Clare Valley at Leasingham wines. Little did I know how immersed in Riesling I was to become. I lived on the local wine tasting bike trail known as the Riesling trail and spent the first two weeks before harvest travelling by bike or car all around the district lunching and tasting at the likes of Skillogalee, the Mintaro pub, the Watervale pub, kilikanoon. A truly beautiful part of South Australia and the Rieslings were incredible. My first harvest was perhaps one of my hardest working what felt like 3 months nonstop as the laboratory manager alongside a French man from Cognac. I learnt to have a great fondness of Cognac but there’s another story about another great drink.

During my 5 months in the Clare valley I tasted all its great variety from the new vintage clean crisp style of Riesling to the aged Rieslings that exhibit petroleum like characters. The next phase in my Riesling odyssey was in Oregon, tasting wines with my colleague and then boss Paul Pujol. He came to Oregon from Alsace where he had been making wine for Kuentz bas. Paul introduced me to the “old” world style of winemaking. The Rieslings were magnificent and many a night we would travel across the appellations of Alsace by wine tasting. Paul explaining the nuances of each terroir as we went.

For me Riesling really is the prettiest of grapes. It is so delicate and expresses itself and the land from which it has grown in the most beautiful of ways - with refinement and precision. Now I have opportunities to try to emulate my past discoveries in my present and future work in the incomparable Central Otago Region. Experience worth passing to the next generation in due time.

Here’s Cheers Jasper, my lad.