Riesling Series Part II: Germany

When fully ripe, the thin skinned pale yellow Riesling berries start to turn golden yellow, exhibiting tiny brown specks on them indicating that their time of harvest is coming soon.

In Riesling Series Part I, we had discussed how grapes turn into wine and what factors affect the wine’s sweetness. We defined sweet wines versus dry and talked about the concept of ripeness. In this piece, we are going to talk about everything Germany - we’ll go over the history of Riesling and talk briefly about terroir before taking on the challenge of learning how to read a German wine label. I highly recommend re-reading part I as we will be revisiting the concept of sweetness and ripeness quite a lot.

First, a word on German wines. All throughout this post, have the words ‘purity’ and ‘precision’ in the forefront of your head. Think about German Rieslings (for the most part) like a well-engineered German car. They are racy yet elegant, curious yet precise, complex yet pure. Every sip is full of wonders and pleasant surprises.

History & geography:

While the first mention of Riesling on record was in 1435, it took another couple centuries for it to become a popular wine. Until the 1700’s, Riesling wasn’t widely planted in Germany and other indigenous varietals were preferred. And funny enough, it wasn’t under German rule when Riesling started climbing to fame. The French took over Alsace in 1648 after a thirty year war and found that most of the vineyards were destroyed. When the time came to replant the vineyards, the French decided to use Riesling. A few years after this, one vineyard in the Rheingau winemaking region in the name of Schloss Johannisberg (Schloss is the same thing as Chateau in French) followed Alsace in replanting its plot with Riesling. The winemaking region of Mosel quickly followed this act and by the end of 1700’s, most German vineyards had replanted their land with Riesling, now deemed a high-quality grape.

Schloss Johannisberg was also the accidental pioneer of late harvest wines, which are semi-sweet/sweet wines. The story goes, in 1775, the permission to carry harvested grapes to the premises of Schloss Johannisberg was delayed and by the time it was granted, the grapes hung on the vine for a couple weeks longer than they should have. Johannisberg winemakers wanted to salvage the crop and made wine out of it anyway, resulting with a sweet wine. That’s how Spätlase (late harvest) was born! We will discuss different sweetness levels of German wines later here, so stay with me. Fast forwarding to 1845: The English Queen was visiting a village named Hochheim in Germany’s Rheingau region and upon tasting their Riesling wines, absolutely fell in love with them. If you’ve ever heard a Brit refer to white wines, most specifically Rieslings as ‘hock’, now you know the reason why. Mid 1800’s onwards, German Rieslings started being highly reputable wines but the fame did not last long. During World War I and II, vast majority of German vineyards were torn to the ground. With German reputation taking a huge hit post 1945, German vineyards started focusing on mass production rather than quality to stay alive. From this point on, a well-made Riesling in Germany was few and far in between until 1980’s.

There are 13 defined winemaking regions in Germany, 5 of which are famous for producing some of the best Rieslings on earth. These are Mosel, Rheingau, Pfalz, Rheinhessen and Nahe. As mentioned before, Riesling is made in the vineyard and not the winery. Your crop is crucial to the kind of wine that you’re going to produce, so terroir is extremely important. With a late-ripener like Riesling, latitude and aspect are also extremely important. Latitude is how north or south on Earth the vineyard is located and aspect is the placement of the vines in relation to the sun. Wine grapes grow best in 30-50-degree latitude in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Germany has one of the world’s most northern-situated vineyards, well into the 50 degrees latitude. This means, the sun is already hitting the surface at a lower angle than it would be closer to the equator, so the placement of vines in relation to the sun is really important. A late ripening grape grown this north will need to maximize the sunlight. That’s why in places like Mosel, you will rarely see vines planted facing north; almost all the vineyards plant their crops on the southern facing slopes. As a late ripener, Riesling berries really start becoming aromatic into autumn. When fully ripe, the thin skinned pale yellow berries start to turn golden yellow, exhibiting tiny brown specks on them indicating that their time to harvest is coming soon.

There is one more vineyard-based concept dear to Riesling that you’ll need to know, especially in order to understand sweeter Rieslings and also some other sweet wines. During the growing season in a vineyard, if the weather is warm enough and the grapes are already moist, a special kind of bacteria can form and cover the grapes. Over a short period of time, if these bacteria are left to their own devices, they will start to dehydrate the grapes until the grapes shrink and become raisin-like. This bacteria is called Botrytis cinerea (more commonly known as ‘noble rot’) and it is responsible for how the sweetest Rieslings are made. When the grape dehydrates to the point that when you squeeze it, no juice comes out, it means the grape is really concentrated with sugar. We already know from part I that during fermentation, yeast can only turn so much sugar into alcohol; so the unmetabolised portion will remain in the wine as residual sugar, contributing to its perceived sweetness. Sauternes, Bordeaux’s famous sweet white wine, is also made this way.

German classification system and the ripeness scale:

The German Riesling classification system can get tricky, especially when those big German names are thrown around. I’ll try to simplify this as much as possible.

Contrary to other countries in the world, Germany produces very small amounts of ‘table wine’; it exists, but no one really pays attention to it. The classification system begins with Qualitätswein, or “Quality Wine” (see? It’s not that hard!). Qualitätswein has to come from one of the 13 designated wine growing areas and can be dry-to medium sweet. Trocken (dry), halb-trocken (half-dry), feinherb (semi-sweet), liebliche (Sweet-ish) and süss (very sweet); are the words used to describe the levels of sweetness. Chaptalization (adding sugar before fermentation to increase potential alcohol) is allowed.

The next level up in the classification system is Prädikatswein. This is quality wine with ‘prädikat’, or some special attributes. Prädikat wines come in different sweetness levels which is determined by the level of ripeness, as we have discussed in part I of this series. Prädikatswein ripeness scale from least ripe to most, is as follows: Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein and Trockenbeerenauslese.

If you recall from part I, ripeness of a grape at harvest (measured in units of Oechsle in Germany) determines the potential alcohol and residual sugar there will be in the final product.

-       Kabinett wines are the lightest, driest Rieslings that are picked when the sugar density in the grape is 67-82 Oechsle.

-       Spätlase (literally means ‘late picked’) wines are harvested a little later, when the sugar density reaches 76-90 Oechsle. Some Spätlase wines can be dry (Trocken), if the winemaker choses to convert more of the sugar into a higher alcohol wine (meaning less residual sugar). This will be indicated on the bottle.

-       Auslese (literally means ‘out-picked’): As the translation suggests, these wines are made from clusters of grapes that were picked out during harvest, as opposed to harvesting every grape bunch together, all at once. Some of these clusters may be affected from Noble Rot, and are picked at 83-110 Oechsle. Auslese Rieslings can still be Trocken; but these wines will be both sweeter and higher in alcohol than a dry Spätlase.

-       Beerenauslese: Literally means ‘berries that are picked out’ (gosh, I love German!); we are now solidly in the sweet wine territory. As the name suggests, the winemaker is having not just clusters of grapes but individual berries hand-harvested. Most of these grapes have been attacked by Nobel Rot and the sugar density is 110-128 Oechsle.

-       Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA): Another finer example of the German language; this word tells you all you need to know about the wine you’re about to enjoy; made from ‘dried berries that are picked out’. We are now in full hand-harvesting territory, where the grapes being picked out have completely succumbed to Noble Rot and have been fully dried out, with sugar density around 150 Oecshle. TBA’s are some of the world’s most exquisite and expensive sweet wines and are sold in half bottle format.

-       Eiswein: Back to simple German words, this means ice wine! Eiswein is a sweet wine that’s made in a completely different way than what we’ve discussed thus far. The grapes that are chosen as Eiswein candidates are left hanging on the vine well into late Fall and should not come in contact with Noble Rot. When the temperatures start dropping below 20 degrees Fahrenheit is when the grapes will start to freeze on the vine and then are harvested (110-128 Oechsle) and pressed while still frozen. A frozen wine grape will be more concentrated in sugar as the entire water content is now ice, so when pressed under frozen conditions, you extract a lot more sugar out of the berry. Ice wine production is extremely finicky given that the freezing temperatures may not come or the grapes may succumb to noble rot. That’s why ice wine is produced in very small quantities in a handful of places around the world.

And last but not least, there is one more layer of the German classification system that we have to touch on before we wrap up Germany. In 1920, about 200 vineyards in Germany got together and decided to form association of the best of the best Prädikat wines, called “Verband Deutscher Prädikats- und Qualitätsweingüter”. Let’s shorten that to VDP so you’ll never have to try to pronounce that in your head again..! In order to be a VDP member, the vineyard has to adhere to more stringent winamaking guidelines than just Prädikatswein. You’ll know if you’re drinking a VDP wine easily because the bottle will have the logo of an eagle either on the cap or the label. With VDP wines, there’s an additional layer of classification beyond the ripeness scale that is site-specific. This is somewhat similar to the Burgundian way of classifying terroir. Gutswein is village-level wine. Ortswein is wine from a single, quality vineyard and has the vineyard’s name on it. Erste lage (first site) is high quality single vineyard wine with the vineyards name and logo on the label as well as the number ‘1’ next to it (kind of like “premier cru” for Burgundy). Last but not least, Grosse lage (great site) and Grosses gewächs (great growth). These are wines from the best parcels of land in the best vineyards in Germany. Grosse lage and grosses gewächs (GG) is equal level of classification, with the main difference being that GG wines will be dry.

A word of caution on VDP. While it is most likely the case that a VDP wine will be excellent, that doesn’t mean that a non-VDP wine cannot be just as good. Like with any other wine quality association, this is highly political. There are plenty of fantastic wines out there (mostly from newer vineyards) which don’t have VDP designation; don’t rule them out because you think they are inferior.

We have covered a lot in this post so if you’ve made it this far, I wholeheartedly thank you for reading and hope that I was able to break down some tough concepts of German winemaking. There are many things that we didn’t get a chance to cover; like what kind of Riesling each region tends to specialize in, but we’ll will save that for another post in the future. Next up on the Riesling series, we are going to learn about Riesling’s presence in the rest of the world. Stay tuned!

This is an excellent visualization of the German wine classification system, courtesy of winefolly.com

Riesling Series Part I: Sweet vs. Dry Wines

In Part I of the Riesling Series, we’re going to talk about what it means for a wine to be sweet versus dry and how sweet wines are made. The first building block in understanding Riesling is nailing down the concept of ripeness of a grape so we will also explore that. Note: we are going to geek out a little bit in this post with some technical terms and definitions but having a basic understanding of these concepts is crucial in getting to know Riesling so bear with me!

Sweetness of a wine is often misunderstood. Fruit-forward and aromatic wines can sometimes be mischaracterized as being sweet, while they are nothing but bone dry. In order to start talking about why this is wrong, we first need to revisit a little chemistry: how do grapes turn into wine?

Fermentation is a chemical reaction that produces alcohol from grapes. There are differences in how white wine is made versus red wine, and many more nuances after that that differentiates one wine from another, but the overall process of fermentation begins after grapes are picked from the vine and get crushed. The natural sugars present in the grape get metabolized by yeast which produces alcohol (and carbon dioxide as a byproduct). So if all the yeast turns all the sugar into alcohol, the wine produced will be ‘dry’, with maximum possible alcohol content. If there is still some sugar left after all the yeast is used up, the alcohol produced will contain residual sugar, which will deem the wine as ‘sweet’ in varying degrees.

Let’s pause here for a second. If all the sugar is converted into alcohol, does that mean the wine will have higher alcohol? Yes! So, if not all sugar is converted into alcohol and there is a bit of residual sugar, does that mean the wine has lower alcohol? Yes! Does that mean sweeter the wine, lower the alcohol? Broadly speaking, yes! The point at which the winemaker decides to stop the fermentation is a very important. Sugar balances out acidity. If there is no residual sugar in a very acidic wine, the wine will not be enjoyable - take the sweetness out of coffee, soda or cocktails and no one would drink them.

Sweetness in a wine is a direct result of how much natural sugar there is in the grape. How much sugar there is in a grape is a direct result of: 1) How warm and sunny of a place the grape is growing in and 2) How long the winemaker waits before they decide to pick the grapes. The more abundant the sunshine and warmer the conditions, the more sugar there will be developing in a grape over time. The longer the grapes hang on the vine, the more time the grapes have to ripen and produce more sugar. There are a couple of more sweet winemaking techniques that we will discuss in the next post; don’t worry about those for now.

Dry wine doesn’t refer to an overly tannic wine that puckers your mouth. If you’ve been using the term ‘dry’ to describe that dry sensation in your mouth after drinking a Cabernet, you just learned that’s not true! On the flip side, sweet wine isn’t sweet because the winemaker stirs in a pound of sugar to the wine before its bottled*. The wine is sweet because the grapes either ripened in a warm place with lots of sunshine and the yeast couldn’t metabolize all the sugar, or because the winemaker decided to pick the grapes later than normal harvest time to allow the grapes to ripen beyond their usual potential, or a combination of these two things.

Now let’s talk about ripeness. All grapes begin their lives with lots of acid and very little sugar. As they ripen, acid content falls and sugar content increases. There are two kinds of ripeness: physiological ripeness (how developed the skin, stems, seeds are) and sugar ripeness. In this post, we’ll be focusing on sugar ripeness which is determined by the sugar content of the grape juice (technical term: must). As the grapes start to ripen, the winemaker will measure how much sugar there is in the grape juice periodically to determine when to pick the wines, using a device called the refractrometer. The sugar content in the grape is observed in units of Brix, Oechsle or KMW depending on the wine region. How many Brix of sugar there is in the grape juice will tell you what the alcohol potential is of the wine that you will produce. Simplified rule of thumb: 1 gram of sugar (1 Brix degree) fermented will result with about 0.5% alcohol.

Let’s go over an example. You’re growing Riesling in your vineyard and you want to make a dry wine. When your grapes start to show signs of ripening, you start measuring the sugar content every day. One day your refractometer device reads “20 Brix degrees” and you decide to harvest the wines. If all goes as planned during fermentation, and all the sugar is converted into alcohol, you will have a dry wine that has 11.5% ABV (alcohol by volume) on the bottle. If you had harvested when the must was 21 Brix, you’d have produced a dry wine with 12.2% ABV. Now lets imagine another scenario, where you are growing Riesling and want to make a sweet wine. You harvest when the refractometer reads 20 Brix again, but this time you stop fermentation after the yeast converts only a part of the sugar into alcohol so you have an 8% ABV wine. This means that the rest of the sugar content that was not converted into alcohol will determine how sweet your wine is.

Now that we know how a sweet wine is made, lets talk about how much sugar there actually is in wines and other beverages we consume daily.

In summary, the urban myth of sweet wines are for the ladies is absolutely not true. A winemaker chooses to leave sugar in the wine to balance out the acidity. The other incorrect myth is that sweet wines are lower quality wines. As we will explore later, some sweet wines are also the most expensive wines in the world with impeccable quality. Sweet wines have acquired a bad reputation, especially here in the US, because the bulk of the sweet wine that we find here is mass produced, lower quality wines. Throw these misconceptions out the door! Take Château d’Yquem as an example. d’Yquem has been producing sweet wines in the Sauternes region of Bordeaux for centuries. In 2011, a bottle of 1811 vintage d’Yquem sold for $117,000, a record number for white wines.

The German Trockenbeerenauslese Rieslings in a recent vintage can sell for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. We will explore these (and all things Germany) in part II of the Riesling Series. Now that we know how sweet wine is made, we are fully equipped to handle the German Rieslings in all there glory. Stay tuned!

*There are exceptions to this: Chaptalization is the process of adding sugar to the must before fermentation. Colder wine regions can choose to add sugar to the harvested grapes to increase the alcohol potential. Not all wine regions allow chaptalization.

Riesling Series: Intro

When I decided to do a blog post about Riesling, it took me about a week to gather my thoughts, then not much longer thereafter to realize there is no way I’m fitting riesling into one post - there is way too much to talk about, one could write a book. In fact, there are publications dedicated fully to Riesling. That’s when I decided to break the Riesling story into three parts.

In part I, we’ll explore together what is a dry wine vs sweet. We’ll get into the geeky side of wine and show some very simple formulas to help explain the concept of ripeness in a grape. We’ll talk about fermentation, harvest, maybe throw in a couple German words here and there. We’ll talk geology, geography, history. We’ll introduce Riesling, the queen of grapes, and talk about where it came from. We’ll learn about what it likes and dislikes. If there’s one thing you get out of part I, it should be that sweet wine does not equal bad wine. Sweet wine isn’t just for the ladies; it can be as bold and hearty, if not more, than your meatiest Bordeaux - if you can handle it!

Part II will be all things Germany. Together we will explore the history of Riesling in Germany, demystify the complex German classification system and learn how to read a German wine label. There will be lots of German to be thrown around but don’t be alarmed, it will be fun! We will literally break down the word trockenbeerenauslese and I promise it will make sense.

In Part III, we will go around the globe and explore Riesling through the lens of Australia, Austria, United States, Canada (They make wine over there?!), France, and others. We’ll delve into what Riesling smells like and tastes like in each territory and learn that tasting petroleum in wine is a thing.

By the end of the trilogy, you will know everything you need to know to enjoy all different kinds of Riesling. Join me in exploring one of my favorite grapes!

Malbec: One grape, two worlds

Who is king of Malbec? Mendoza or Cahors?

When many of us think of Malbec, we think of Argentina. This ancient grape has a story that predates its existence in Argentina and it is a story worth telling. Malbec might be one grape, but the French and Argentine expressions could not be more different. Let’s explore!

French Malbec
Geography and history

• First off; did you know that Malbec is just a nickname given to the grape by the people of Southwest France? The grape’s real name is Côt or Côt Noir. The French words “mal” (bad) and “bouche” (mouth) gave the grape its nickname, because the wine snobs of Southwestern France didn’t always have the highest opinion of this grape. In order to understand why, let’s jump into a little history lesson.

• Côt is an ancient grape that is believed to be planted two thousand years ago by the Romans around what’s now Northern Burgundy. It found a home in Southwest France around 1300’s and was produced as a single varietal wine in the region of Cahors in Southwest France, just outside of Bordeaux. Malbec was also used as a blending grape in Bordeaux varietals, especially in poor vintages to beef up the wine. In fact, during the famous 1855 Classification of Bordeaux, many of the classified wines were in fact almost 50/50 blends of Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec. (Funny that they still adhere to that classification 165 years later, where Malbec is now less than 5% of Bordeaux blends, with Merlot and Cabernet Franc playing much larger roles).

• Up until the French Revolution, Bordeaux trade merchants had full control of the waterways in Southwest France: anyone who wanted to use the rivers that opened up to the ports on the Atlantic Ocean were subject to harsh tariffs. In addition, all the Bordeaux wine from current vintage had to be completely sold before any other wines of nearby regions could be shipped out, which hurt the marketing of Cahors Côt’s and the sorts. With little opportunity for self-marketing and the ability to attract investment, Southwest France wines were eclipsed by their mighty neighbor Bordeaux for centuries to come (hence the mean nickname that stuck, Mal-bec).

• Malbec’s story in France is a sad one. First, it was the Bordeaux based tariffs until 1789 French revolution that deemed it an undesirable grape. Then in 1877, phylloxera* wiped out the majority of European vineyards. When grafting** was discovered as a method to replant vitis vinifera*** again, vineyard owners preferred not to plant Malbec due to its thin skin (fickle nature) and proneness to frost and rot, and replaced Malbec with easier to maintain Merlot instead. The little Malbec that was planted in the region post-phylloxera got destroyed in a deep freeze in 1956. No wonder why no one knows Malbec as a French wine!

• Interestingly enough, SW France can make as good wine as any ordinary Bordeaux, if not even better. The region is a bit warmer than Bordeaux, giving the vines an opportunity to ripen more than their neighbors north (ie. fuller wines with bolder expressions of red fruit). In fact, certain Southwest France growing regions that are very close to the Right Bank of Bordeaux are referred to as “Bordeaux Satellites”, as they produce wines very similar in style and quality. Takeaway for readers looking for value wines: prefer Cotes de Bergerac wines over 4th/5th growth Bordeaux at a similar or even less price point.

*Phylloxera: an insect that latches onto grape plant roots and destroys crop. Phylloxera wiped out all of European vineyards in late 1800s.

**Grafting: It was discovered that American grape plant rootstock was phylloxera resistent. After phylloxera devastation, European vineyards replanted their grapes by grafting them onto American woodstock.

**Vitis vinifera: European grape vine that produces common, small berried wine grapes we all know like cabarnet sauvignon, pinot noir, riesling, malbec, etc. Compare that to Vitis Labrusca that makes table grapes, such as the Concord grape used to make jams.

Taste profile & food pairing

- Inky black, highly tannic, tart, refreshing acidity. Underripe black fruit, black plum, leather, iron, barnyard.

- Fermentation in neutral oak. Benefits from aging. Served at room temperature, open 2+ hours prior to consumption

- Pair with: Cassoulet, steak, hard and salty cheeses.

Sante!

Argentine Malbec
Geography and history

• There are no indigenous grapes in Latin America. So how did Malbec, this quirky French grape, came to be known more as an Argentine wine? To me, its the story of a successful immigrant!

• Wine making in Argentina started in the 16th century with European settlers bringing seeds and cuttings of vines. While always being a big wine producer (currently the 5th largest producer in the world), Argentina did not export wine until the 1990’s due to various reasons like political instability, economic crises and until recently, good wine making quality.

• Wine doesn’t grow everywhere in Argentina, which is the second largest country in South America. The three growing regions are The Northwest (warmest region, includes Salta), Cuyo (the largest region, includes Mendoza) and Patagonia (the farthest south, coolest and smallest). Without exception, Argentine vineyards are some of the world’s highest at above 4,000 ft of elevation! With the exception of Patagonia, Argentine wine regions are desert-like dry and are subject to intense, year-round sunlight. What allows wine growing in these places are 1) large intra-day temperature swings and 2) altitude.

• Without getting too dorky,

  1. Large intra-day temperature swings allows the vines to take advantage of sunshine and heat during the day to ripen, but stop growing as the afternoon fog rolls in and temperature drops drastically at night. This way, grapes fully develop without giving up any acidity.

  2. High altitude wines are subject to intense luminosity including UV, which softens tannins, leading to a Malbec with more plush and soft tannins.

• Now, we had already talked about how Malbec is a thin skinned, fickle grape. How is it able to survive (and even thrive!) at 4,000 ft of elevation? There are two reasons:

  1. Clonal difference: Argentine Malbec is a different clone than what’s found in France. Fun fact: It’s probably the most pure clone of Malbec found these days, since French vineyards were wiped out with phylloxera in late 1800’s and Malbec came before then to Argentina. Argentina was never subject to phylloxera, so the Malbec vines mostly grow on their own rootstock.

  2. Genetic adaptation: Over time, the grapes grown in Argentina have changed to adapt to environment it is in. For instance, Argentine Malbec is a smaller berry with much thicker skins. Thickness in skins protects against the heat during the day and also the cool of the night, which produces wines with more flavor, acidity and body.

• As a result of this unique growing environment, Malbec from Argentina is much more fruit forward, rich, fuller bodied, with softer tannins and velvety mouth-feel. With the help of some foreign investment via joint-ventures and wine-making tips of famous oenologists like Robert Mondavi and Paul Hobbs, Argentina now makes world class Malbecs.

Taste profile & food pairing

- Plum and red fruit, velvety texture, soft and round tannins, lower in acidity.
- Common use of new oak imparting cinnamon, vanilla notes. Served at room temperature, aging appropriate, open 1-2 hours prior to consumption
- Paired best with beef: Any kind of steak.

Salud!

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Somm’s picks: Below are my picks of Cahors and Argentine Malbecs at three different price points

Cahors, France:

$$$ - Chateau Lagrezette “Le Pigeonnier”
$$ - Chateau Eugenie Haute Collection
$ - Chateau du Cedre AOC Cahors

Argentina:

$$$ - Vina Cobos Volturno, Cuyo, Mendoza
$$ - Cuvelier Los Andes Grand Malbec, Uco Valley, Mendoza
$ - Catena Zapata Malbec, Mendoza

Note: It’s not always easy to get your hands on Cahors wines!

Albariño vs. Grüner Veltliner

Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a wine event for a big law firm’s wine club. We compared and contrasted Albariño, a Galician white wine and Grüner Veltliner, a signature Austrian grape. Here is what we learned.

Albariño: a native Galician grape and its namesake wine

Geography and history

• Albariño… the great Spanish wine… Hold up! The Albariño grape is actually native to Portugal; known there as Alvarinho. While Spanish Albariño wine is named after the grape varietal, Alvarinho in Portugal is rarely made into a single varietal wine. Rather, it is blended with a few more grapes to make up Vinho Verde.

• In Spain, according to the wine classification system, the region is what gives a wine its name. Think, Rioja. We know (and love!) Rioja by its wine region name and not its grape name, tempranillo. Albariño is a rare exception.

• Spain is best known for its red wine making. Until the late 1980’s, which is when Spain started adopting modern wine making techniques such as temperature controlled fermentation, Spanish white wines weren’t very marketable because they didn’t exhibit their current refreshing, ripe fruit profile with healthy minerality. This is because warmer temperature fermentation tends to convert the desirable fruit profile into a ‘cooked’ one, and can sometimes even cause hydrogen sulfide to be released, which is when you get that stinky, rotten egg aroma in your wine. 80’s onward, when the use of stainless steel tanks become more common in Spain, Spanish whites flourished. Albariño took its fair share from this glow-up!

• Galicia has been a wine making region for centuries and is home to white wine producing grapes but because the wine wasn’t very good prior to the 80’s, it was produced en masse and wasn’t too profitable. The winemaking in Galicia took a turn in mid 1900’s with the advance of international drug trafficking. Sitting right on the Atlantic Ocean, North Western Spain became the drug entryway into Europe, and the then-unprofitable wineries (Bodegas) became fronts for drug operations! The police still occasionally bust some Bodegas in the region for drug-related crimes.

Taste profile & food pairing

- Fruit-forward with notes of lemon, nectarine and grapefruit.
- Stainless steel fermentation. Consume young and serve ice cold.
- Pair with seafood: Shellfish, scallops and octopus

Salud!

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Grüner Veltliner: a signature Austrian grape

Geography and history

• Being the most widely planted grape in Austria, Grüner Veltliner and its eponymous single-varietal wine also known as “GrüVe” is what put Austria on the global wine map.

• Austria has a not-so-straightforward wine classification system; in fact there are three different classification systems:

  1. National classification: Sweetness-based classification based on the existing German system.

  2. Districtus Austriae Controllus (DAC): The newer system similar to the Spanish/French DO(C) system, which classifies wines based on their appellation*, formed in 2001.

  3. Wachau classification system: Before the DAC was established, many of the growing regions came up with their own classification systems. Wachau, a small but mighty region, was one of them. The Wachau categorizes its wine three-ways, based on Alcohol By Volume (ABV).

  • Steinfeder: Maximum 11.5% ABV, literally means “stone feather” that depicts the feathery grass that grows on the stoney terraces of Wachau. This is the lightest GruVe style.

  • Federspiel: Referring to a falconry device, this wine has between 11.5% and 12.5% ABV and has the precision of a predator bird hunting for its prey.

  • Smaragd: Translating to emerald, Smaragd actually refers to a green lizard that can be seen in the area. Minimum 12% ABV and 9 grams of sugar per liter, this wine is smooth and creamy like the green lizard that slides around and basks in the sunny slopes of Wachau during harvest.

• Austria has four main wine regions, where each are made up of smaller appellations: Niederosterreich (lower Austria), Burgenland, Steiermark (Styria) and Wien (Vienna), with 60% of the total production coming from Niederosterreich. One of the best appellations for GruVe (as well as Riesling) is the Wachau, which is in Niederosterreich. A UNESCO World Heritage site, Wachau is only responsible for less than 3% total wine production in Austria and yet it is one of the most well-known ones.

• The reason why certain appellations felt the need to start their own classification systems stemmed from a scandal that took place in Austrian winemaking in 1985. It was found that some of the mass produced Austrian contained diethyline glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze, which gave the wines in question more structure/body and a sweeter taste profile. Grapes in cooler climates often struggle to ripen, which can lead to bitterness and loss of flavor in the wine produced from them. As a result, cooler climate wine production can require more handholding and care, and thus higher costs of production. Certain ‘clever’ winemakers in Austria, discovered the addition of ‘anti-freeze’ and used it as a shortcut to mass-produce cheap and drinkable wine. Once revealed, this caused a credibility issue for Austria and urged wine regions to come up with their own rules and regulations to ensure quality wine was being made and sold.

  * Appellation: A legally defined area used to identify the types of grapes grown to control the quality of associated wines.

  Taste profile and food pairing

- Yellow/bruised apple, pear, honeydew when warmer vintage. White pepper at the finish is a signature marker for GrüVe.

- Use of detectable oak is not permitted in Grüners by the DAC; stainless steel production. Serve ice-cold and enjoy young.

- Pairs well with aromatic vegetables that are usually tough pairings; lemongrass, green onion. Great companion to Thai and Japanese cuisine.

Prost!

Hi, I’m Ziggy and this is my wine blog

Getting started

I have always been an avid yet amateur writer. As a child and young adult, I kept a diary. On long plane rides, instead of watching movies or reading books, I wrote about my feelings, fears and dreams. In my day-job, I wrote about the markets and economics. I’ve always wanted to start a blog but never quite knew what topic would fuel me the most. Three years ago, I picked up a new hobby by taking wine classes. 18 months later, I was a blind-tasting sommelier, with lots of passion for the art of wine.

I’m still a financier by day and have no intention of changing that any day, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything with all this bottled-up wine tidbits, pun intended. About a year-or-so ago, I started hosting wine tasting & learning events through my connections in the corporate world and now I have found the perfect way to marry my passion in wine with my long-time habit of writing and deliver you simple, yet fascinating content about the world of wine.

I plan on covering educational material on grapes, producers, regions, winemaking techniques, my own notes from my wine tasting events etc. Let’s start here and see where things go.

Cheers and thanks for being here,

Ziggy