Riesling Reflections

by Dan Berger
When groundwork was being laid for establishing the International Riesling Foundation,
seeking members who would support the organization’s goals, one of the first and most
enthusiastic supporters of the idea was famed Riesling producer Jeffrey Grossett of Australia.
I met with Grossett in the grand entranceway at the 13th Australian Wine Industry
Technical Conference in Adelaide in [...]

California wine makers can be rather inquisitive, so it was a great deal of pleasure last month for me to pour for them a number of wines they had never tasted.
After a trip to speak at a New York viticulture symposium, I arranged to bring back home a number of New York Rieslings, [...]

January 2010—More than a million cases of Riesling wines marketed in the United States this year will include a “Riesling Taste Profile” designed to make it easier for consumers to predict the taste they can expect from a particular bottle of Riesling.
The Riesling Taste Profile was created by the International Riesling Foundation (IRF), a global [...]

By Dan Berger
A complainant wrote to me recently to say that my comments that there were a plethora of fascinating Rieslings from many places in the world were, in his words, mindless.
His point was that there was but one Riesling and it came from Germany, and that all others were mere pretenders. And, from [...]

By Dan Berger
I opened a bottle of Spanish Sherry the other day that had on its front label the words “Medium Dry.”
And this brought to mind a possible problem with the International Riesling Foundation’s taste scale, which has so far been seen as a great addition to the wine labels of numerous [...]

As sales of all Rieslings worldwide increase, one of the categories that, at least from an anecdotal standpoint, is among the fastest selling is Dry Riesling. Many decades ago, notably in England, dry “hock” was a basic style of wine that was understood by wine lovers. About 100 years ago, some of the world’s most [...]

I suppose it might be flippant to answer the question “Why is there an international foundation to support Riesling?” with, “Why not?”
Depending who you are, the need for such a formal organization is either obvious or it is pointless. A resident of Trier who dines out, is a wine lover, and has many contacts with [...]