Whither Washington Riesling?

At the Rasa Vineyards (Billo and Pinto Naravane) tasting at Artifex, during Spring Release Weekend in Walla Walla, I sampled a newly-released off-dry Riesling called "The Composer," made with old (Dionysus) and young (Bacchus) vines from the Sagemoor Vineyard in the Yakima Valley. In my description - to be published in the June issue of the Review - I called it "A true to variety world class Riesling." This makes me wonder why we don't have more world class Rieslings in Washington State.

There should be plenty of fine sources for Riesling. The variety is the most produced white after Chardonnay. The 2009 grape harvest yielded 32,100 tons, following Chardonnay at 33,400 tons. Riesling comprises 21% of the total for white. Several Riesling vineyards are over 30 years old (planted during the Riesling craze of the '70's): Cold Creek, Dionysus, Celilo, Solstice and others. But the bulk of the variety's production goes into wines that generally sell for under $10 a bottle, Chateau Ste. Michelle's bottlings being the most ubiquitous.

I suspect that Riesling has an image problem for two reasons: the huge volume of popularly-priced wines, and the perception that Riesling is "sweet" (most wines are at about 1.5% residual sugar, the threshold where sweetness becomes perceptible). There are just two well-known premier bottlings of Riesling: Chateau Ste. Michelle's Eroica (a collaboration with Dr. Ernst Loosen of the Mosel) and Long Shadows' Poet's Leap (a collaboration with Armin Diel of the Nahe). There are a few more well-respected Rieslings: Efeste's Evergreen Vineyard, Canoe Ridge's Snipes Canyon Dry Riesling, Nefarious' from the highly promising, mineral-laden Stone's Throw Vineyard, near Pateros, and Chateau Ste. Michelle's Cold Creek Vineyard (I recently tasted a particularly memorable '06 that was loaded with floral aromas, vivid fruit acids and lanolin).

However, except for a few limited bottlings such as the 2007 Poet's Leap "Carmina Burana" Casked Dry Riesling and 2005 Botrytis Riesling, I have run across few "world class" Riesling aside from Rasa's "The Composer." This makes me yearn for Washington counterparts to Rieslings such as those of the great German estates of the Rheingau and Mosel-Saar-Ruwer and France's Alsace (think Zind-Humbrecht and Deiss). These cannot be duplicated, but they can be emulated. I believe there is potential for that. Billo and Pinto (see above) please take note!