Over the last week or so, I have tried to get more familiar with Riesling by tasting five different dry Rieslings. I had a couple from Australia (Eden and Clare Valley), one from Washington State, one off-dry from New Zealand, and one from Germany. My favorite of the bunch was the high altitude Clare Valley Riesling (review a couple of posts below). This note is for the German wine. My first impression was that it lacked complexity. For me, it was just boring. The color was light yellow with a hint of green. On the nose, I get a bit of minerality (not as much as I was expecting), some white flowers, some green apples, and a touch of melon fruit (perhaps there is a touch of sweetness on the nose which is where I am getting the melon fruit from). Everything on the nose is quite subtle though. There is nothing about this wine that jumps out at you at first. Even the next day, the nose had still not developed into something more attractive. On the palate, things only get slightly better. There is good acidity, but I could not characterize this wine as bone dry. Although it is dry, a tad of sweetness still comes through. There is a slight honey component to this wine. There are also some green apples. I do not get a whole lot of minerality (slate), maybe some apricot, some lemon, as well as some citrus rind. If I had tasted this blind, I would have probably been disappointed. However, since I know that this is a $13 Riesling from Germany, I think that it is probably a descent QPR wine. If I had to give this a score, I would probably give about 86 points. From my research, this wine seems to be getting quite a few scores at or above 90 points. Personally, I think that that is inflated. Do not get me wrong, this is not a bad wine for the price but I think that there is certainly better white wine out there around those prices.
Anthony SanfordWine has become a passion. Join me as I develop my understanding and love for wine. Archives
January 2016
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