Wake Up, People, And Smell The Riesling!

As much as people like to play the “gotcha” game with me (OK, Mr. Know-It-All Wine Guy, what wine is this and when was it made?), I like to turn the tables. My most recent victim: Charlene Heyward of Stone Mountain, Ga.

We were getting the food prepared for the Smoke Rise Diving Sharks’ end-of-the-season party, when I handed here a plastic, pink wine “glass” containing about 4 ounces of white wine. “What type of wine is it?” I asked.

“Sauvignon blanc?” she asked back.

Actually, a great guess. This wine was redolent in lemon-lime flavors with acidity as refreshing as the cool side of the pillow on a hot summer night.

“It’s a riesling from Australia. Like it?”

She did, but of course this information totally confused her because to Charlene—and several million other red-blooded, wine-drinking Americans—rieslings are all sweet.

To me, riesling—the lost king of white wine—comes in three categories:

1. DECADENT, RICH, LUXURIOUS, EXTREMELY SWEET AND OFTEN QUITE EXPENSIVE DESSERT WINES. So delicious and attention-grabbing are these wines, in most cases, they can overshadow even the most delectable post-entrée offering with just one sip. This represents a tiny fraction of worldwide riesling production. One should approach these wines with small glasses, tiny sips and the time to ponder the multitude of flavors and sensations.

2. STEELY, REFRESHING, SUPREMELY FOOD-FRIENDLY AND ABSOLUTELY UN-SWEET WINES. This is the type of wine I gave to Charlene. We should all be dinking more dry rieslings all year long, but especially during the heat of the summer. Better yet, unlike the very sweet, dessert rieslings, these wines can be quite inexpensive. Dry rieslings go great with an amazing array of foods, including sweet, southern-style pork barbecue…no, I’m not kidding.

3. BLUE NUN-STYLE WINES. These are what most Americans, including Charlene, expect of riesling, something moderately sweet without much character and generally unappealing with most foods. Blue Nun Riesling once was wildly popular here (it is still available); and it is not that it is a “bad” wine (whatever that means) so much as it lacks the panache of its sweet and its dry (unsweet) cousins. Many Americans these days prefer a dryer, less-sweet style of wine, so they avoid all rieslings, which just can’t shake this Blue Nun reputation.

2007 Penfolds, Bin 51, Riesling, Eden Valley, Australia

• $20

• Two Thumbs Way Up

• Refreshing as a bowl of chilled citrus fruit, it has flavors and aromas of lemons, limes and tangerines with a touch of mango and papaya. This wine is bone dry. For $7 bucks less, Penfolds’ Thomas Hyland line is nearly as good.