06/06/07 Reisling Part 3

Welcome to vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Today we continue to explore a great summer wine Riesling. As I mentioned earlier in the week our local wine writer dedicated an article to the resurgence in popularity of Riesling. This is great news to me as Riesling is by far my favorite white grape. One of the reasons I believe it fell out of favor is that Americans for the most part only had access to the sweeter styles of Riesling so they had very little exposure to truly great Riesling. As it became less cool to drink sweet wines people turned their nose up at Riesling. Too bad there are some truly great wines being made from Riesling  wines that are not very sweet and are able to age for a very long time. The article quoted Randall Graham, a pioneering Riesling winemaker from California as stating "Riesling is the most misunderstood and under-appreciated grape variety, like Cinderella a princess relegated to the status of a charwoman&" However, there is hope - the acreage of Riesling planted in Washington state has doubled since 2002. Which means - more wineries are producing Riesling and with any luck at all there will be more collaborations with the likes of Randall Graham and Germany's famed Dr. Ernst Loosen. We can all look forward to some world class wines and the opportunity to dismiss those old notions that Riesling is just a gooey sweet wine. Remember to send your wine questions to Linda at vine to wine dot net and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.