NYTimes: Asimov on "Dry" American Rieslings

Interesting article by Eric in today's NYTimes:
"Dry" Rieslings
in which he ponders the meaning of "dry" in American Rieslings.

Supposedly, the threshold of tasting r.s. in white wines is about 0.5 gm/100ml (0.5%). I tend to prefer my Rieslings on the dry side, unless I know it's something like a Spatlese or Auslese and know to anticipate some r.s,, which dictates how I use that wine. I always find it frustrating when I buy a Calif R that is labeled "dry Riesling" and find that it has a noticible amount of r.s. The Tatomer R has a whopping .77% of r.s. The Alsatian wine industry has pretty near killed my interest in their R (and GWT) by so often leaving too much r.s. in their (along w/ a low acidity and high alcohol). Pretty much Germany and Austria are the last refuges for those of us searching for dry R.
Tom

Some Oz wines too, look for the Elderton and Pewsey Vale.!

Some Oz wines too, look for the Elderton and Pewsey Vale.!

Yup, Bob...forgot to mention the Oz Rieslings, which I like quite a bit.
Tom

there is hope on the horizon (heh, heh)

[David M. Bueker]

there is hope on the horizon (heh, heh)

Eeeeeenteeereeesteeng (says Rieslingfan).

The lack of sweetness/dryness indications on labels has been a recurrent subject of my rants, particularly with Riesling and Chenin. However you should not give up on Alsace, Tom, because it is one of the main producing regions where some producers are trying to provide help, albeit inconsistently from one producer to another.

A body called something like the International Riesling Foundation proposed a scale some years ago but nobody, at least in Europe, seems to use it. This proposal seemed to me to address well the issue of sugar/acid balance which affects subjective impressions. It beats me why there is such reluctance on the part of producers to tackle this problem which is driving so many consumers away because of uncertainty about what they will find in the bottle.

The lack of sweetness/dryness indications on labels has been a recurrent subject of my rants, particularly with Riesling and Chenin. However you should not give up on Alsace, Tom, because it is one of the main producing regions where some producers are trying to provide help, albeit inconsistently from one producer to another.

A body called something like the International Riesling Foundation proposed a scale some years ago but nobody, at least in Europe, seems to use it. This proposal seemed to me to address well the issue of sugar/acid balance which affects subjective impressions. It beats me why there is such reluctance on the part of producers to tackle this problem which is driving so many consumers away because of uncertainty about what they will find in the bottle.

Not to worry, Tim. Not gonna give up on Alsace. It's just I got to pick & choose more carefully.
Back in the old day ('70's), most of them were bone-dry/austere/acid. I had a rule of thumb that the higher the acidity
so that they were painful to drink when young, those are the ones I'd buy because they would age into
something great. Z-H and their infection of Alsace pretty much ruined that idea.
Tom

I'm coming back to this thread, because I am sitting here sipping the '16 Hermann Wiemer Dry Riesling (Seneca Lake AVA) and it is a fantastic wine. And it is off-dry. Yeah, it would be nice to have some indication of the RS on these wines, but its not a big issue to me as long as the acid is there to give a basically dry impression. Asimov likes the Argetsinger Riesling from Ravines, and I do too. But Ravines is one of the Finger Lakes producers that makes uncompromisingly dry Rieslings, and for some people, they may be a bit too austere. The acid-sugar balance on the Wiemer wine is spot on (IMO), and I guess I would call it "dry enough". Maybe this would be a Feinherb wine if it were German.

In Germany I found some of trocken Rieslings from the wrong vintages or an awkward point in the aging curve to be like sipping battery acid (I think this is less of a problem now than when the Germans first started to get enthusiastic about dry wines). The same could be said for some of the Aussie Rieslings.

Thought I would bring this thread up as I am just opening a 2013 Fox Run Dry Riesling. Stay tuned!