WineAlign - Awards - 2018 NWAC Riesling

Results of the 2018 WineAlign National Wine Awards of Canada (The Nationals)

Riesling

Category overview by judge Michael Godel

Riesling is again on the rise and the reasons why are as varied as the artistry it’s equipped to display. It has been 40 years since the Pennachetti family of Cave Spring Cellars and German vintner Herman Weis each planted riesling in Ontario, at Cave Spring Vineyard and in St. Urban Vineyard on what is now Vineland Estates. In British Columbia the site originally farmed by Pioneer Vineyards on the eastern slopes of the Okanagan Valley is home to the 1978 planted Block 5 used in the Tantalus Old Vines Riesling.

My how things have changed. The trending line ascends as the general public comes around and warms to the versatile grape so popularity is not just in the hands of geeks, oenophiles and connoisseurs. Ask your favourite sommelier, product consultant or wine writer. Riesling’s neighbourhood is beginning to gentrify in a big way but it’s also expanding experimental and ancestral horizons. It will always be just riesling but today’s varietal vernacular goes beyond dry, off-dry, semi-sweet, Süssreserve, late harvest and Icewine to now include skin-contact, barrel fermented, unfiltered, wild ferment, Blackball and The Geek.

There are many reasons to believe in riesling, that versatile and brutally honest grape. Riesling holds no punches, speaks its mind, tells it like it is. Grown worldwide and vinified in so many varying styles, riesling is not so much a chameleon but rather a mutant. It takes root in every vineyard, marking its terroir, expressing itself singularly and without apology.

WineAlign judge Treve Ring had this to say after the 2017 WineAlign National Wine Awards of Canada. “As our palates progress, we often shy away from these simpler, fruity styles for more structured, savoury and minerally wines, which again, brings us full circle (close the ring) back to serious and ageworthy riesling.”

Many riesling lovers have long believed that sugar levels are both arbitrary and unpredictable so Canada’a best should be of the dry variety. Do we really think that way anymore? Judge Bill Zacharkiw wrote this last year. “Rieslings, especially from cool climates like the Mosel in Germany and Niagara tend to have residual sugar. Don’t be scared. You know what? I love them. The sugar makes the aromatics go “boom,” while the acidity keeps the wine tasting dry.” Bill is correct and it is also those sugars that allow riesling to stay alive, age and develop its classic petrol notes.

My personal opportunities to taste wines from the Okanagan Valley, Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Valley, The Niagara Peninsula, Prince Edward County, Lake Erie North Shore and Ontario’s South Coast have been many. Before too long there will be greater access to the wines of emerging regions like the Oak Ridges Moraine, Georgian Bay, The Northumberland Hills, Quebec and Vancouver Island. Riesling is everywhere.

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Thirty Bench 2016 Winemaker’s Blend Riesling, Niagara Peninsula, Ontario

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