GALAFREY WINES

Where does Riesling Come From?

Earlier, Riesling was sometimes claimed to have originated from wild vines of the Rhine region, without much support to back up that claim. More recently, DNA fingerprinting by Ferdinand Regner indicated that one parent of Riesling is Gouais Blanc, known to the Germans as Weißer Heunisch, a variety that, while rare today, was widely grown by the French and German peasantry of the Middle Ages. The other parent is a cross between a wild vine and Traminer. It is presumed that the Riesling was born somewhere in the valley of the Rhine, since both Heunisch and Traminer have a long documented history in Germany, but with parents from either side of the Adriatic the cross could have happened anywhere on the way.

It has also been suggested, but not proved, that the red-skinned version of Riesling is the forerunner of the common, "white" Riesling.^[10] Most likely, the genetic differences between white and red Riesling are minuscule, as is the case for the difference between Pinot noir and Pinot gris.

Petroleum notes in aged Riesling wines

With time, Riesling wines tend to acquire a petrol note^[16] (goût petrol in French) which is sometimes described with associations to kerosene, lubricant or rubber. While an integral part of the aroma profile of mature Riesling and sought after by many experienced drinkers, it may be off-putting to those unaccustomed to it, and those who primarily seek young and fruity aromas in their wine. The negative attitude to aromas of mature Riesling, and the preference for young wines of this variety, seem more common in Germany than in Alsace or on the export market, and some German producers, especially the volume-oriented ones, have even gone so far as to consider the petrol notes a defect which they try to avoid. In that vein, the German Wine Institute has gone so far as to omit the mentioning of "petrol" as a possible aroma on their German-language Wine Aroma Wheel, which is supposed to be specially adapted to German wines, and despite the fact that professor Ann C. Noble had included petrol in her original version of the wheel.

RED RIESLING

DID YOU KNOW? A very rare version of Riesling which has recently received more attention is Red Riesling (Roter Riesling). As the name suggests, this is a red-skinned clone of Riesling (a skin colour commonly found for e.g. Gewürztraminer), but not a dark-skinned clone, i.e., it is still a white wine grape. It is considered a mutation of White Riesling, but some experts have suggested the opposite relationship, i.e., that Red Riesling could be the forerunner of White Riesling.^[10] Small amounts of Red Riesling is grown in Germany and Austria. In 2006, the Rheingau winery Fritz Allendorf planted what has been claimed to be the first commercial amounts of Red Riesling.^[40] To confuse matters, "Red Riesling" has also been used as a synonym for red-skinned Traminer grapes (such as the Savagnin rose of Klevener de Heiligenstein) and the obscure variety Hanns, which is a seed plant of Roter Veltliner.

A bunch of Riesling grapes after the onset of noble rot. Thedifference in colour between affected and unaffected grapes is clearly visible.

The most expensive winesmade from Riesling are late harvest dessertwines, produced by letting the grapes hang on the vines well past normalpicking time. Through evaporation caused by the fungus Botrytiscinerea ("noble rot") or by freezing, as in the case of ice wine (inGerman, Eiswein),water is removed and the resulting wine offers richer layers on the palate.These concentrated wines have more sugar (in extremecases hundreds of grams per litre), more acid (to give balance to all thesugar), more flavour, and more complexity. These elements combine to make wineswhich are amongst the most long lived of all white wines. The beneficial use of"noble rot" was discovered in the late 18th century at Schloss Johannisberg. Permission from the Abbey of Fulda (which owned the vineyard) tostart picking the grapes arrived too late and the grapes had begun to rot; yetit turned out that the wine made from them was still of excellent quality