Glassware

A glass changes what reaches the mouth. With a Rheinhessen Riesling from the Roter Hang, the difference is almost audible — you can practically taste it. A glass that's too wide lets the wine's strong acidity shoot forward unchecked. One that's too narrow, on the other hand, traps the scent of peach and flint before it ever reaches the nose.

The right choice is a tall, slender glass with an opening curving slightly inward, often sold as a Riesling glass, whose narrow bowl directs the wine toward the center of the tongue as you swallow rather than to the sides, where acidity hits hardest. The narrow opening also concentrates the fine, volatile aromatics that a young Riesling brings in abundance.

Temperature matters a great deal. Eight to ten degrees Celsius (46–50°F) suits a simple estate wine, served chilled like a light wheat beer. A VDP.Grosses Gewächs from Nierstein or Nackenheim, on the other hand, can handle ten to twelve degrees (50–54°F) and is happy to sit in the glass for a quarter of an hour before drinking. Served too cold, exactly the smoky, mineral notes the Roter Hang is famous for tend to hide.

A young estate wine needs no decanter, but a Grosses Gewächs aged ten years does. With age, Riesling sometimes shuts down almost completely for a year or two — winemakers call this the closed phase — and only twenty minutes of air contact will open it back up again, much like an aged red wine.

Never pour beyond the widest point of the glass — in a typical Riesling glass, that's barely a hundred milliliters. Filling it to the brim robs the wine of the space it needs for its aromas to unfold. Ripe apricot needs exactly that room. The same goes for the salty, smoky note from the Rotliegend. Less in the glass truly means more in the nose here.