The 2008 Riesling Shoot-Out

By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent

Events sometimes receive an exclamatory billing only to draw attention to an antithetical subtext. The title of the "Riesling Shoot-Out," the brainchild of John Zuccarino of Silver Springs Winery and wine author Thomas Pellechia, evokes a line-in-the-sand Wild West gun fight between Finger Lakes and German rieslings, with only the biggest and baddest wines left standing to proclaim victory.

Of course, the results were far more mixed, and therein lies the point.

The big critics and the publications they work for consider Germany the home of riesling and treat her wines well, giving many a score above the coveted 90-point mark. As this website and others have noted, great wines from the Finger Lakes often hit a ceiling of 88 or 89 points, begging observers to ask, "How can so many Finger Lakes rieslings can get so close to 90 but no standouts emerge from the pack?"

It's a question that both Lenn and I have asked here on LENNDEVOURS as well.

Last Saturday, a panel of 16 judges representing wine blogs, local media, two major wine publications, and even the New England chapter of the German Wine Society, descended on Glenora's hotel and dining facility on Seneca Lake to blind taste a round of 15 rieslings. I was privileged to be one of the sixteen judges.

We tasted the 15 wines, three glasses at a time, in the same order. The organizers told us that these wines were all rieslings, and that they represented Germany, the Finger Lakes, and a single Canadian outlier. No other information was given.

The judging sheet asked us to provide some general impressions about aromatics and varietal taste, and then asked us to give a numeric score on the 100-point scale.

After the tasting was complete, the organizers revealed that there were two repeats (a 2006 Wiemer and a 2006 Prejean, both Finger Lakes wines) in the 15 wine program, so we had really only tasted 13 wines. All of the judges immediately realized, with some mix of humor and horror, that we all had given different scores to the same two wines, with a few of us granting wildly different scores.

At the end of the post I will list the wines tasted during the competition. The general results exhibit what many would expect: the Finger Lakes held up just fine. Four of the six Finger Lakes wines received scores of 90 or above with a total of twelve votes for this distinction divided amongst the four wines. Five German wines received scores of 90 or above, with 15 total votes divided between these rieslings. The Canadian wine received two scores of 90 or above.

The Wiemer and Prejean were the Finger Lakes standouts. The German wines with the most 90+ acclaim were the Donnhoff and the Messmer.

Tasting Impressions

To taste 15 wines in a row is problematic for me. One wine with distinct or powerful qualities -- good or bad -- is bound to influence one's impression of the wine that follows. For instance, my notes and scores for the Prejean duplicates were completely different, perhaps owing to what wines preceeded each taste.

I greatly enjoy the Ravines Argetsinger riesling as a rule, but did not give it a high score during the tasting. Later, at dinner, I poured a glass of this wine and enjoyed it immensely, noting that its strength lies in its subtlety. Despite this wine's overwhelming quality, it might have been overshadowed by the style of wines that came before it in the tasting round.

When I conveyed my thoughts on the challenges of a mass tasting to Thomas Pellechia, he responded, "Yes, that's the point. No one can taste this many wines and not be influenced." He went on to describe his theory that the wine's world assumption that numerous wines can be lined up and tasted in true comparison to one another is bogus, and that wines can really only be considered in a singular fashion.

Thoughts for the Future 

After speaking with John and Thomas, it became clear that neither thinks that German and Finger Lakes rieslings should be compared to one another for any other reason than to demonstrate that each wine is its own wine. In other words, good German rieslings may deserve good scores, but so do good Finger Lakes rieslings. It's what's in each bottle that counts, and that should be it.

"There is a bias," Zuccarino explained to me. "And this event shows that there are great wines from both regions that hold up well in each other's presence." John made sure to remind me that he does not produce a riesling for his winery and therefore he had no personal agenda in the individual outcomes.

The German wines were selected by David Bueker, chair of the New England Chapter of the German Wine Society, who purposely brought quality wines that had scored in the 90 range in major publications.

The Riesling Shoot-Out did not shatter anyone's expectations, but it did make a simple and compelling case that tasting, when done in a region-specific fashion, is prone to bias. When wines are tasted for varietal aspects and those aspects alone, it matters not where the wine originated. Each glass was a glass of riesling, and despite the flaws inherent in any tasting regiment, we tried to judge each wine on that fact alone.

The Wines 

The list of wines in the order that they were tasted:

• 2006 Bassermann-Jordan Riesling Trocken ($15.99 - Pfalz)
• 2007 Chateau Lafayette Reneau Dry Rielsing ($14.99 Seneca Lake, East Side)
• 2006 Schlossgut Diel Goldloch Riesling Trocken Grosses Gewachs ($59.99 - Nahe)
• 2007 Josef Leitz Ein Zwei Dry '3' Riesling Trocken ($15.99 - Rheingau)
• 2007 Ravines Dry Argetsinger Vineyard Riesling ($25.00 Keuka Lake, East Side)
• 2006 Hermann Wiemer Dry Riesling ($17.99 Seneca Lake, West Side)
• 2007 Glenora Dry Riesling ($11.99 Seneca Lake, West Side)
• 2006 Hermann Donnhoff Grey Slate Riesling Trocken ($19.99 - Nahe)
• 2006 Hermann Wiemer Dry Riesling ($17.99 Seneca Lake, West Side)
• 2006 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken ($19.99 - Mosel)
• 2006 Atwater Estate Semi-Dry Riesling ($17.00 Seneca Lake, East Side)
• 2006 Prejean Semi-Dry Riesling ($11.99 Seneca Lake, West Side)
• 2007 Messmer Riesling Halbtrocken ($13.99 - Pfalz)
• 2007 Vineland Estate Semi-dry Riesling ($ ?  Ontario)
• 2006 Prejean Semi-dry Riesling ($11.99 Seneca Lake, West Side)

Comments

[tish]

Blind tasting like this is always humbling. Sometimes concentrating too hard leads to funny things. Is it possible that sugar levels threw people off as they progressed?