Dry Riesling tasting

[Dang]

Final club tasting was a dry riesling blind tasting. Here is the lineup:
'13 Weingut Alzinger Steinertal Smaragd, Wachau, Germany
'13 Dopff Au Moulin Schoenenbourg de Riquewihr, Alsace, France(Grand Cru awarded in 1985)
'12 Weingut Keller Rheinhessen Renaissance, Kirchspiel, Germany
'13 Weingut Hermann Donnhoff Schlossbockelheimer, Nahe, Germany
'13 Weingut Wittmann, Kirchspiel, Germany (Biodynamic viticulture)
'10 Tantalus Old Vines Riesling, BC, Canada (Northernmost vineyard in this listing)
'12 Cave Spring Beamsville Bench, Ont, Canada
'06 Grosset Polish Hill, Clare, Australia (from my wine fridge, stored horizontally)
Here some observations:
(1) It was almost impossible to visually separate the wines. All exhibited pale gold look, considering that Grosset was a lot older than the rest.
(2) All wines had the usual lemon, lemon flower, apple nose, but the European exhibited strong tropical nose of passion fruit. The Canadian provided some pineapple and guava touch. The Grosset added kero notes that helped my wife and I to identify it quite readily.
(3) Tasting provided sheer enjoyment if you like the style. Grosset and Tantalus showed definite mineral touches, but the older German gave some hint as well. The European showed very high degree of elegance. One wondered what these wines would exhibit, say, six years from now! That would be my recommendation to the club.
(4) Then came the definition of dry. Tantalus has around 8 g/L of sugar. Dopff has 4.9. Some Clare material can be down to less than 2 g/L. Personally, except for Grosset, all the wines should be considered as off-dry, their nose of tropical fruit, especially passion fruit, made them sweeter!
Lovely quality for all wines!
Cheers.

[Mahmoud Ali]

Sounds like an excellent tasting, and my favourite way of tasting and assessing: blind. If I recall, Cave Spring also makes a premium riesling, and it is highly regarded. I just had the '07 Polish Hill so I imagine the '06 was not very different and in need of plenty of ageing.

Mahmoud.

[Wizz]

Thanks for posting. I thought I should reply, with a series of coincidences between this and a tasting I attended 4 years ago:

The tasting was also Rieslings from around the world, all dry, as defined in their region. This tasting was held in NZ, and was used to benchmark some styles for a wine we were planning to make (which incidentally, was labelled dry but made at 5g/l sugar).
There was a Grossett in the mix, and it was also much older than the other wines - it was an 01, where the others were 08s to 10s, and it stood out because of its age.
The 10 Tantalus Old Vines was also included.
The Tantalus winemaker was present at the tasting (!).

I have a different view on the definition of Dry, and believe some flexibility, including on residual sugar, should be allowed to deal with balance between acid sugar and alcohol.
The Tantalus would have been searingly acidic without those 9g/l of sugar. I believe the Grossett Polish Hill and Watervale are truly dry, but they are usually made with TA's between 7 and 8g/l. If the Germans were Grosses Gewachs wines, they have to be picked at high ripeness levels so the alcohol will give texture to hide the acids, as will a few grams of sugar.
I've had an Australia Riesling at 10.5g TA and 25g/l RS and it tasted bone dry.

cheers

Andrew

[JamieBahrain]

'13 Weingut Alzinger Steinertal Smaragd, Wachau, Germany

Not being pedantic but my Austrian mates from the Wachau would go pyscho at this.

[Mahmoud Ali]

'13 Weingut Alzinger Steinertal Smaragd, Wachau, Germany

Not being pedantic but my Austrian mates from the Wachau would go pyscho at this.

Psycho as in the mates from Wachau would go Whacko?

[Wizz]

'13 Weingut Alzinger Steinertal Smaragd, Wachau, Germany

Not being pedantic but my Austrian mates from the Wachau would go pyscho at this.

[Dragzworthy]

'13 Weingut Alzinger Steinertal Smaragd, Wachau, Germany

Not being pedantic but my Austrian mates from the Wachau would go pyscho at this.

Psycho as in the mates from Wachau would go Whacko?

... and loved this!!!

There’s a few more good jokes in there but I’m holding back