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Riesling Day
You could say I grew up on riesling.
There was always a bottle of Deinhard Green Label on the dinner table at family gatherings. To this day, there still is. I’m not sure when it first appeared, but I’ve known that bottle since I was far too young to drink it.
When I started studying wine, I was living in BC and began to understand riesling through producers like Tantalus Vineyards, Synchromesh Wines, and Martin’s Lane. Of course, no BC Riesling conversation is complete without Orofino Winery and their lineup of single-vineyard expressions.
Even though Niagara is now internationally respected for its rieslings, BC will always be my yardstick. If you fell in love with U2’s version of All Along the Watchtower before discovering Jimi Hendrix’s, you’ll understand what I mean.
It was also in BC that I discovered riesling’s native home: Germany.
At the time, great German wines were still easy to find in BC stores and widely available on frequent trips to Seattle. So, like any sensible wine student, I stocked up.
Because if riesling has a superpower, it’s ageing.
Some of those bottles are still resting in my cellar today. Riesling’s natural acidity—usually balanced with a touch of sugar—not only makes it one of the most fascinating wines on earth, it also makes it remarkably long-lived. Often carried on a lighter frame of alcohol, riesling manages to be delicate and powerful all at once—like a hummingbird with a jet engine.
And then there’s Clare.
Years ago, at a tasting in the UK, I was lucky enough to meet Jeffrey Grosset, widely considered the godfather of riesling in Australia’s Clare Valley. He guided us through his different bottlings and introduced me to the region. Clare rieslings are extraordinary: razor-sharp, bone-dry, age-worthy wines sitting comfortably alongside some serious shiraz and cabernet. Sadly, not much of it reaches Ontario, but it’s always worth grabbing when it does.
Like chardonnay, riesling is often misunderstood— and maybe that’s part of its charm. Many people love to hate it after being clobbered by sweeter, low-quality wines, mostly from Germany. Brands like Black Tower and Blue Nun, or those cat-shaped bottles, did the grape no favours.
But Germany is far more complex than that. It’s a land of meticulous labelling laws and historic vineyards—some hundreds of years old—still producing the world’s greatest rieslings.
Take the A.P. number, or Amtliche Prüfungsnummer, printed on every German label. Each sequence tells a story: the testing centre, the village where the grapes were grown, the producer, the application number, and the year the wine was submitted. In wine, the details matter.
And unlike chardonnay, there’s very little a winemaker can hide behind with riesling. No oak. No makeup. Just grape and place.
After all these years of studying wine, travelling to vineyards, and filling a cellar with bottles from around the world, riesling still reminds me of that simple moment: a family table, a familiar green bottle, and a grape that quietly turned out to be one of the greatest in the world.
This Friday, March 13 is International Riesling Day. You might consider putting a bottle on your table too.
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