Don's Gillette's Weekly Wine Blog
Weekly musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Check back here each week for Don's latest thoughts on various wine-related topics. Read Don's full bio...
Email Don directly with your wine-related questions.
A Farewell to California Riesling
I have always adored Riesling and have watched in dismay, for thirty five years, its gradual abandonment by California's growers and vintners.
In the early 1970s, when I began drinking it, one could buy lovely Spatlese and Auslese-style Rieslings from Wente, Freemark Abbey and a few others. In the late '70s and early 1980s, Joseph Phelps, Chateau St Jean, Freemark Abbey, Chateau Montelena, Trefethen and others made fine Napa and Sonoma Riesling, as did new wineries in Santa Cruz, Monterey, Santa Barbara and elsewhere. In 1978 Smith Madrone began producing what has become our most reliable dry Riesling and Long Vineyards began a 26-year string of beautiful late harvest bottlings.
Over the years, Long's proved my personal favorite. It was a great vineyard and winemaker Sandi Belcher's dedication and skill produced a wine that was intense, focused, balanced and age-worthy. Disasterously, the 2003 vintage was Sandi's last, as a legal dispute cost Bob Long control of the property.
Smith Madrone continues, but production is so limited that wine stores now rarely get more than one case. In fact it is now hard for wine stores to even find domestic Rieslings to sell, regardless of quality. Most good producers make much less than in the past, and they sell their limited output through tasting rooms almost exclusively, and there are almost no new plantings. In the last year we introduced three new Riesling bottlings, whose total production added up to less than 450 cases. The only one of these from new vines, produced 37 cases.
Things are not about to get better, as there is no longer a customer base to tempt growers and winemakers into expanding production. The root cause of this may be that, in California, it has never been possible to consistently produce the German single-vineyard, multi-level, dry-to-sweet pattern. In fact the sweetest and grandest bottlings have been easier to produce locally than good dry versions. With fine German wine, it is common for a drinker to learn to love a sweet or a dry bottling from Wehlener Sonnenuhr or another great vineyard, and later develop an equal appreciation for its same-vineyard opposite.
Despite all this bad news, I remain a Riesling lover, and Napa Valley Winery Exchange - a store notable for it's exclusively California shelf-stock - has for years, let me pre-sell great German vintages through the "back door" to a small group of like-minded customers. The 2006 vintage in Germany is a great one and I am pre-selling some of the best wines and some fantastic bargains. I only wish I had some domestic versions to brag about.
If you are interested in seeing Don's tasting notes and the prices on the 2006 pre-arrival offering, you can email a request to Don.