The Austrian and German Riesling Problem

 

It became apparent during seminar mock exams that I really had no reasonable written answer for why I would note something as an Austrian Riesling vs a dry German example.  If you want to list out problems that people are facing, this is about the most insignificant issue anyone would ever face.  Essentially, if I have a white wine I'd describe as "acidic as fuck" and "severe", there's a pretty good chance it's from Austria or Germany.  I'm not sure how the culture inserts itself into the wine style, but it's hard to offer a counter argument.  You can have a Spanish white wine and can immediately feel like it belongs at a seaside party where there's a bunch of weird dance music that isn't as annoying as you'd expect it to be and you feel sunburned but you don't care and some dude named Javier just showed up with a bunch of tiny clams to toss on the grill and his impossibly beautiful girlfriend seems like she's flirting with everyone but she isn't because that's just the way she is and everyone is cool with it.  That can be contrasted with Austrian riesling which usually feels like a guy in a black turtleneck with a blank expression that is annoyed at the lack of precision from the plating of his schnitzel lunch.  You can't write that on an exam even though I'm right on point here.  

I decided I needed to challenge myself with some high quality dry Austrian and German riesling and write "the perfect note",  It was harder that make this happen in Lorain County on the spur of the moment than you'd think.  I stopped at a pretty good wine retailer in town to pick up a good quality Austrian riesling (Astoria Market) and I discovered they didn't have ANY wine from the countries of Austria or Germany.  I chalked this up to either "lack of consumer demand" or "WW2 atrocities committed on the owner's family 80 years ago".  I ended up going where I thought I should have gone in the first place ("The Gas Station on Clifton") and ended up getting a three wine exercise for some blind action. 

* Peter Lauer No. 6 Senior Ayler 2024 Saar 

* Wagner Stempel Heerkretz GG 2017 Riesling Rheinhessen

* Weingut Brundlmayer Ried Heiligenstein 1er Riesling 2021 Kamptal

First off, these wines are all VERY high quality.  They tick the boxes on intensity, purity, and length of finish.  The Peter Lauer one made at 10% ABV with a little residual sugar left behind (8g/l per the tech sheet) for balance was delicious, an easy drinking wine that still seemed "serious" with assertive acid structure, complex citrus and candied citrus flavors.  It was about the same price as a Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, and I've gotta tell ya, if the well heeled suburban moms around here had any idea of how good this was they'd wonder why they kept buying the world's most forgettable white wine when they could have this in their glass.  Unfortunately, they all think this is Black Tower and they'd get laughed at by the gals at pilates for being unsophisticated by drinking riesling.  The Germans have a lot of work to do to get this perception changed, and that has been a topic amongst wine education classes since 1984.  Here's a quick hint, the old standby argument of "pair the wine with spicy Asian dishes" isn't going to move the market.  

The Brundlmayer riesling from Austria was a different take.  It's more severe and rigid, totally dry, and about 13% ABV.  There is a little bitter note you have to really focus in on that gives it some complexity.  It feels weightier than the Lauer one, lacking some of the immediate joy and floral aromatic of German styles.  It was fairly easy to tell next to the German example with some sugar, but what about next to a bone dry GG bottling?  This is what I was curious about... 

The Germans made this decision in their VdP meetings that "dry" was the only way people were going to take them seriously.  As anyone that has ever poured wine at a consumer event knows, all Americans have been shamed into telling every restaurant waitress and store clerk that they only "like dry wines".  This is, of course, absurd as every market leading chardonnay and red blend has about as much sugar as a Snickers bar, but perception is reality.  As an employee at Robert Weil in the Rheingau told me, "Everyone comes in here and says they only want to drink dry wines, and then they all leave with off-dry wines in their bag.".  We have sugar in our bread for fuck's sake.  Who doesn't like sweet?  

The German wine guild the VdP created this GG category to be the top of their dry wine pyramid, a signal to super engaged wine consumers that "this is the good stuff" and would set the high price marks in their portfolio.  They would increase the price 20% every couple of years in a "rising tide lifts all boats" concept that would increase their overall revenue down the quality pipeline.  The idea is a really good one on the surface.  The German premium producers can't drive prices on their best wines and these wines are much lower in price than other corresponding wines from more fashionable regions internationally.  By highlighting their finest terroirs, they could give consumers something to cling to with their "Grosses Gewachs" labeling with the clarity that these wines would all be made in a bone dry (read "very serious") style.  Here's the problem... While these wines are undeniably high quality, they aren't very fun to drink.

This Wagner Stempel Heerkretz is a good example.  It absolutely kicks the fuck out of you with acidity that is a gut punch.  It is powerful with a core of citrus fruit wrapped up in rocks that makes you go "wow" even with 9 years of age.  As far as I can tell, this wine will last for 75 years.  I don't know if it will get better, but I guess it will mellow out a bit and create enthused comments of "It's so youthful!" 40 years from now.  To me though, they've lost the plot a bit.  To me, what German riesling does better than anyone else is conceal this often brutal acidity with a little hidden sweetness that offers balance much in the same way Champagne does.  The perk of riesling is a much more broad natural flavor spectrum while doing so.  This hammer of acid in the Wagner Stempel Heerkretz is like when a virtuoso guitar player is in the studio and keeps dropping increasingly complex parts into a rock song.  Just because you can do something, should you?

Those Mosel rieslings that have 9-10% alcohol and 10-20 g/l of residual sugar are fucking delicious.  Muller and Prum's upper tier bottlings from a good vintage show a style of wine you can't get anywhere else on the planet.  Meanwhile you have the best terroirs in Germany dedicating some of their output to making a style you can get out of an assyrtiko, furmint, gruner, or albarino that you would forget 20 seconds after sipping the damn thing.  If I were the German wine producers I would think of my role in the international wine market as like being the Grateful Dead.  Not everyone likes the Grateful Dead, but people that do REALLY, REALLY like the Grateful Dead.  It's better to have 100 fanatics than it is to have 1000 sorta engaged consumers.  I suppose having people tell you "I don't like sweet wine.  I like dry" a million times will have an impact though.

I have been to two extended GG tastings in my life as part of the Master of Wine seminars in Germany.  We went through (in Germanic precision) about 50 GG bottlings in a tasting that was more endurance than pleasure.  The wines were all unmistakably well made, linear, sharp, and almost all vaguely the same as each other.  I don't think that the GG class of wines will serve their intended goals as being ambassadors of German fine wine because they just aren't that fun to drink.  Invite people in with your beauty, not your intellect.  Tom Waits "Bone Machine" is an undeniably strong piece of art, but you're going to clear the room at any party if you throw it on.  Sometimes you need some James Brown.

We can go down the nightmare of German labeling laws, but it's just too tedious to even write about.  There is a cultural need for Germans to make complex systems of organization that make complete sense to them but the rest of the world's brains just disconnect from the same way you would if some record collector geek buddy starts to tell you how he has his collection organized.  If I can bottom line it for you, the lesson I learned was that a German GG tastes a lot like a Austrian high quality riesling from Kamptal but it hits you harder with acid, fruit intensity, and doesn't have the phenolic edges.  If I'm writing a note about a dry German riesling from Rheingau vs something from Lower Austria, here's what I'm going with for now...

"The moderate ABV (11%), pronounced acidity and delicate pure citrus/green apple primary fruit profile without phenolic grip or technical weight suggests a German origin rather than the typically drier more extract driven and structurally firm Austrian style."  If it's like that Lauer from the Saar, I'm going with this... "The combination of elevated acidity, moderate alcohol (10%) and perceptible off-dry balance is more consistent with Germany where residual sugar is commonly retained to balance high natural acidity unlike Austria where riesling is typically fermented dry."  Those Austrian rieslings are dry, usually around 13% ABV, more extract, firmer structure, and have that phenolic edge that gives you a little "what was that?" on the finish.  

If it's a GG?  I guess I'm going with "The bone dry acidic sledgehammer with diabolical citrus fruit core bludgeons you with the pain/pleasure combination of a Reeperbahn dominatrix that leaves you filled with quiet pleasure and shame for your acceptance of her physical and mental assault on your soul.  The question of why you willingly gave your money for this episode will not haunt you as much as the questions that you cannot repress about why you love this domination as much as you do.  You know you will return but you do not know why, and for this you are ashamed."  I don't know how they will score this answer, but I'm not wrong.