Tasting

Hold a glass of Mittelrhein Riesling against something white, and the color is the first thing you notice: pale, often with a hint of green, sometimes almost water-clear in young wines. Only after many years does it shift toward gold. That's not a weakness — it simply reflects how much acidity this wine carries. Acidity keeps the color youthful, while alcohol and age slowly deepen it.

Take a first sniff with the glass still, then a second after a vigorous swirl. The difference is especially pronounced with Riesling. In the still glass, lemon, green apple, and a faint floral note usually emerge first, since these light molecules evaporate the fastest. After swirling, the heavier compounds follow, the ones that take longer to release: a cool, almost smoky note. Many call it flint, and it does in fact relate to the slate in the soil.

On the palate, acidity dominates, felt along the sides of the tongue, sharp and lively as in almost no other German white wine region. Unlike the tannin in a red wine, this isn't a rough sensation but a tingling pull that gets the saliva flowing. This very acidity carries the wine and keeps it fresh, even when sugar is present, as in a fruity Spätlese from the Loreley district.

Sugar alone reveals little about taste. A dry Kabinett can come across sterner than an off-dry Spätlese, because the acidity hits unchecked, while a touch of residual sugar cushions it without masking it. Anyone who looks only at the label misses the real question: does the sweetness sit in balance with the acidity, or does the wine tip toward one side or the other?

At the end, the clock comes into play, even if no one really needs one. Count the seconds as the last taste slowly fades. With a simple wine, that's barely three or four seconds. With a great Riesling from the Bopparder Hamm or the Bacharacher Wolfshöhle, though, the citrus fruit lingers for twenty seconds or longer. What remains at the finish is a fine, mineral bitterness that echoes on and on.