Ask any Sommelier or winemaker in Nova Scotia what
their favourite white wine is, and it’s a good bet they’ll say
riesling. Some might say it’s their favourite wine, period.
 There’s something special about Germany’s most noble grape
that elicits this response. Riesling has beautiful lime, lemon, apple
and/or peach notes, plus pretty white flowers and sometimes honey…all
things that make it a perfect wine for spring.
It is a so-called aromatic variety, along with gewurztraminer,
muscat and viognier. These grapes have more naturally occurring
aromatic compounds than less complex cousins such as chardonnay. This
is why they are generally unoaked or lightly oaked, and the use of
malolactic fermentation, which gives soft creamy notes to wine, is
mostly avoided. This wine is fine without the winemaker screwing with
it.
What really sets it apart from other aromatic grapes, though, are
its acidity and minerality. A good riesling, whether from its ancestral
home in Germany or anywhere else around the globe, has an appealing wet
stone minerality on the nose. With age, many top rieslings develop a
more complex mineral nose described as diesel, petroleum or paraffin.
New drinkers are sometimes caught off-guard by this, thinking it’s a
defect, but experienced riesling aficionados practically require
it.
To many novice wine drinkers, riesling is a sappy sweet German white
preferred by old ladies. This is due to the large volume of bad quality
wine, including Liebfraumilch, that flowed out of Germany after the
war. Remember your folks drinking Blue Nun or Black Tower? While these
wines are better today, they were originally sweet schlock for the
masses, lacking riesling’s signature acid.
Germans drink mainly dry wine, but their wineries rely on exporting
sweet stuff to North America. We haven’t matured as a riesling market,
but we’re starting to clue in.
One exciting aspect of this new maturity is the availability of
great Nova Scotia riesling, even if it is in small quantities. Gina
Haverstock, winemaker at Gaspereau Vineyards, built a reputation for
riesling, with medals in 2007 and 2006 vintages at national Canadian
competitions. Her highly anticipated 2008 will be released early
summer, and pre-release tastings indicate another crisp, citrus/green
apple and mineral infused success. It is very small production, only 52
cases, unavailable in restaurants and priced dearly at over $20 a 500
ml bottle.
Gaspereau planted more riesling at the highest elevated section of
their sharply sloped vineyards, with other traditional European
varieites, but it remains a small part of white production, after
Seyval Blanc, Muscat and L’Acadie.
Other Nova Scotia wineries grow riesling, like St. Famille, which
blended it with Vidal Blanc, and Bear River, but it’s too risky to
build a business on, because international grapes like riesling are
more tender and less hardy than established Nova Scotia varieties.
Kim Strickland from Gaspereau winery said all her vitis vinifera
grapes were hit hard this winter. “They can survive temperatures of
-20C for a day or two, but when you get four, five or six days, they
can’t survive. The primary buds freeze and die. We hit -28C in our
vineyard this winter.”
 Stickland heard through the grapevine that other wineries had
similar difficulties, so if 2009 will be a lean year, best move fast to
snag the 2008. Nova Scotia riesling is as rare as it is special.
Craig Pinhey is a certified beer judge and sommelier.
Read his top five riesling picks for spring online at thecoast.ca.
Pinhey’s Picks
While you are waiting for the 2008 Rieslings from Nova Scotia to appear, you can check out five of Craig Pinhey’s favourite Rieslings that are available in Halifax:
1. Te Mania, New Zealand, $21.05 at Premier Wine & Spirits
– fresh, mineral and lime driven, with great acid
2. Lingenfelder Bird Label, Pfalz, Germany, QbA, $17.35 at NSLC
– off-dry, floral, ripe apple, with a long finish
3. Thirty Bench, Niagara, Ontario, $22.44 at NSLC Port of Wines, Bayer’s Lake
– dry, lemon-lime and mineral nose, with fresh acidic finish
4. 1999 Dr ZenZen Riesling Spatlese, Moselle, $19.99 at NSLC
– this honey and apple tinged beauty with a long finish shows how Riesling ages wonderfully
5. Cono Sur Riesling, Chile, $11.99 at NSLC
– off-dry, citrus, tastes well above its price
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.