Riesling on the rise

Riesling grapes produce versatile, high-quality wines with appeal for many tastes.

The demand for Finger Lakes Rieslings just keeps on growing.

Photos by JEFF RICHARDS/Star-Gazette Dr. Konstantin Frank's 2004 Dry Riesling was bottled in March at Dr. Frank's Vinifera Wine Cellars in Hammondsport

As area wineries continue to earn accolades for their crisp, clean-tasting wines, more and more customers are seeing the value in versatile Riesling grapes.

Drier Riesling versions often exhibit cool, mineral tastes, while the sweeter style wines frequently burst forth with flavors of peach, tangerine, lime, lemon or grapefruit.

The dry Finger Lakes Rieslings that have become so popular are great accompaniments to flavorful dishes. The combination of mineral tones and acid balance complements seasonings in the meal.

Less dry Rieslings are perfect for summer sipping anytime or great as a before- dinner glass of wine. Even with sweeter Rieslings, the acid balance often provides a refreshingly clean finish.

How are Finger Lakes wineries coping with the increased interest in their Riesling wines, especially after the last few harsh winters that damaged many vines?

At Dr. Frank's Vinifera Wine Cellars in Hammondsport, they have already released their 2004 vintage Dry and Johannisberg Rieslings. The 2004 Dry Riesling was bottled in February and the Johannisberg Riesling a month later.

When they came to market a short time later, the wines filled a void left after the supply of the previous vintage Rieslings had been exhausted.

Wine expert Kevin Zraly led a white wine seminar at the sixth annual Washington D.C. International Wine and Food Festival in mid-March. He asked for Dr. Frank's to provide their dry Riesling as one of the featured wines for tasting.

The just-bottled Johannisberg Riesling was shipped by mistake. That accident turned out to be quite a blessing. Dr. Frank's employee Allyn Brand was staffing their booth throughout the event. According to Allyn, several people came over after the tasting seminar and said, "it was light and delicate and the best- tasting wine in the seminar."

It instantly became a hit even though it had been released sooner than the winery intended.

At Hunt Country Vineyards in Branchport, the 2003 winter was so severe that they had no Riesling grapes of their own to harvest in 2004. They buried their vines to protect them over the winter and according to owner Art Hunt, "expect a good crop this year."

Art was able to secure grapes from Seneca Lake growers to provide a 2004 vintage. They have a few hundred cases of their 2003 Riesling still available so Hunt Country is in no rush to bottle the 2004 vintage. They will try to hang on until summer to bottle the 2004 Riesling. That me be a challenge because "the distributors are looking for all we can ship," Art says.

Anthony Road Wine Company winemaker Johannes Reinhart is also holding back on bottling his Rieslings at the Penn Yan winery. He is experimenting with different yeasts and fermentation processes in five tanks this year. He expects to learn which techniques work best and apply them to future vintages.

Hermann J. Wiemer, owner of Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard in Dundee, has another set of winners on his hands. I recently had the opportunity to taste 2004 Riesling tank samples with Hermann and his assistant Fred Merwarth. I commented that the dry Riesling exploded with wonderful fruit flavors, but did not seem to exhibit the mineral tastes I remembered from their dry Riesling of the previous vintage. Fred smiled and said that was right.

The dry Riesling this year was from another vineyard site, and its strengths were in the fruit flavors and not the mineral component. When I got to the semidry Riesling, it also had lots of fruit flavors with a subtle mineral taste woven in. Fred said that the mineral characteristics could have been provided by this year's juice from the vineyard that was used to make their 2003 dry Riesling. They both should be great wines when released.

Hermann also has a nursery business that grafts a variety of grape vines for others to plant vineyards.

When I stopped the winery this week, Hermann was packing Riesling clone grafts in soil where the bud and wood, spliced together, will callous, or grow together. Later this spring the grafts will be planted in a field and nurtured like regular vines. In the fall, they will be dug up and prepared for shipment to customers.

There are only about 500 acres of Riesling vineyards in the Finger Lakes. With the increasing popularity of the wine, most wineries would welcome more.

Jeff Richards' wine column appears monthly. For comments or questions, he can be reached at 607/271-8279 or 800/836-8970, ext. 279, or e-mail: jrichards