These folks may have what you’re looking for:
We’ve managed to get some otherwise unavailable bottles through them.
Are they able to ship into Ontario?
Yes.
but not legally!
In theory the Ontario LCBO markup should be charged (~100%). But very difficult to enforce and is generally not enforced for NON-commercial shipments.
I remember hearing the cheap white zin craze gave all sweet wine a bad reputation. But that bad reputation has since shifted quite a bit (at least in NYC and surrounding area). I’ve noticed a lot more really good Riesling popping up (perhaps from strong marketing campaigns like the annual Rieslingfeier where every year, participants have grown significantly).
I’m more of a fan of Auslese and Spatlese from the Nahe (generally around 8 to 10% alcohol levels).
If they can make a select late harvest wine at 13% alcohol, couldn’t they make something with alcohol levels of 8 to 10% with grapes picked sooner than the cave springs select harvest? Not sure i follow on not having enough yield. If a winemaker wanted to produce something closer to a balanced kabinett, spatlese, or auslese (I’m assuming “select late harvest” were single berry picked but i may be wrong), they’d simply cut fermentation time on the juice? You’d end up with lower alcohol and higher residual sugar (should only be done if acidity was high that year/was a colder year and wasn’t too wet). As for price point, there’d be more reason to charge the current higher prices for a better balanced wine. Heck, if they did that and it came close to German Riesling, I’d buy a lot more. It’d be a shame if they were producing dry wines when acidity in the grapes could produce significantly more balanced wine.
If I’m missing some part of the equation, whether that’s from the business end or the production end, please let me know.
I’m NOT a Winemaker – just a Wine Taster (? Drinker) but do have a background in Chemistry.
Without getting too complicated, wine is (usually) made from ‘ripe grapes’. The balance of sweetness/acid IN THE GRAPES arises from the weather (and viticultural practices). Picking ‘unripe’ grapes will often lead to unbalanced wines (potentially can be adjusted by winemaking practices).
But the alcohol ‘potential’ is directly related to the sugars in the wine and the yeasts used (which convert the sugars to alcohol).
Looking through my cellar, indeed the Auslesen are typically around 8% for wines from the 70’s and 80’s.
More recently, changing weather patterns and ‘improved’ viticultural techniques have resulted in ‘riper’ grapes i.e. higher sugar content. The acidity is more complex (depends also on difference between highest and lowest daily temperatures) but ‘all other things being equal’ todays grapes possess higher sugars and hence greater ‘potential’ alcohol. Oversimplifying, higher alcohol in the final wine for the same winemaking techniques. Or, conversely, if the alcohol is ‘kept low by stopping fermentation’ – more residual sweetness in the wine i.e. the 1980’s Kabinett now tastes more like a Spatlese.
Indeed, in both Germany and Austria there have been adjustments to account for this. Some producers ‘declassify’ a Spatlese and call it a Kabinett. Some have dropped the traditional terms and now produce ‘branded’ wines or (as in Austria) have simply dropped the classifications.
A parallel development is the ‘movement’ to less intervention (often marketed as ‘organic’). Some winemakers are loathe to intervene in fermentation, allowing the yeasts to ‘do what comes naturally’. This is most evident (to me) in wines from Alsace where it’s almost impossible to determine whether a [lower-end] wine is dry or slightly sweet. WITH FOOD I usually prefer a dry wine and I now avoid most Alsace producers as the reality is that the yeasts are ‘killed’ by the higher alcohol – BEFORE the sugars are completely converted to alcohol. You might want to try a few Alsace wines – they seem to me to be roughly equivalent to Kabinett (albeit higher alcohol).
You also assume “select late harvest are single berry picked” – I don’t think that’s true. The cost of selecting is massive – it’s only done when the price that can be charged is sufficient to cover those costs. Most grapes are mechanically harvested (sometimes ‘single bunch’) at the lower price points. ‘Select late Harvest’ is a Marketing term!
Most consumers are EXTREMELY price sensitive – after all there are many alternatives. NOT Riesling (but illustrative), a few years back, Greek wines (e.g. Assyrtiko) flooded the LCBO shelves, mostly priced around $19.95 (significantly below world market prices) – when they jumped up to $30-40 (world price), the market in Ontario collapsed and they’re a rare commodity in the LCBO today. If you can’t sell the wine and cover your costs that’s a death spiral.
And overriding everything is that Riesling is “unfashionable”. That acidity seems to be undesirable (no, I don’t understand it either). ‘People’ rave about ‘Extra Virgin Olive Oil’ – which requirement is to be less acid than ‘Non-virgin’. Citrus fruit has become sweeter and sweeter to appeal to consumers raised on sugar based drinks, to the point that I will not buy any Florida based citrus – it’s no longer ‘citric’. And the juice is similar – all sweet, no acid.
Or summing up – the market just isn’t there for your style – so be prepared to pay more (if you can find it).
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Just a FYI - LCBO has a Riesling Kabinett (10% alcohol) on sale. I haven’t tried it, but the Producer is generally pretty good.
[
Selbach Tradition Feinherb Riesling Kabinett 2020]
(https://www.lcbo.com/en/selbach-tradition-feinherb-riesling-kabinett-2018-21031)
750 ml bottle LCBO#: 21031
$21.25
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Thank you for the insight. To go through some of my background, I’ve had several regional and vertical tastings of German Riesling across 4 or 5 of their regions both from taking wine tasting “classes” covering about a dozen wines each time for about 2 years straight in Brooklyn (either by the owner of the wineries like Donnhoff, Selbach, etc or the distributors) as well as attending Rieslingfeier tastings each year up until Covid. I also frequently drive back to NY/NJ to pick up wine i can’t find here. I’m friends with the wine buyer at this Brooklyn store (same age, both born in the same city in the Midwest). I got a lot of info from him as well. Have some sommelier friends who tell me i might as well get my license (didn’t want to spend several thousand dollars for something i did just to enjoy and share)
It struck me as odd that the wines you see at around 8 to 10% alcohol level is significantly harder to find here at LCBO. I noticed no such drop off in availability in the NYC and surrounding area. In fact, I’ve stored away several from 2015, 16, 17 that are between 8 to 10% alcohol level (I’ve also held quite a bit from the 70s to 2000s from each decade) and the sweetness doesn’t seem that far from some of the wines I’ve had from the 70s (owner of Schlossgut Diel brought some amazing stuff from their cellar that tasted like candied yuzu).
I’ve asked these wine makers a lot of questions over the years, and my taking a lot of notes each time while drinking/tasting have yielded me, what i feel, a fairly good understanding of German Riesling.
At least around the NYC areas, the style I’ve been able to get at rock bottom prices years ago cause it was so misunderstood and no one wanted them are getting harder to come by as its gained significant popularity over recent years (as evident by how quickly Rieslinfeier tickets sell out now and how much people are crammed into large restaurants wanting a taste). I was speaking with one of the managers at LCBO about German Riesling and the market for it here as I’ve noticed a significant discount on a German Auslese at a specific location about a month or two ago. He’s had informed me that people still aren’t aware of what it is and the old white zin sigma is still strong in the area. He had dozens of bottles and they were selling at s price that’s about the same as what they’d go for in NJ (with current FX). It’s not that they’re not producing them. It’s that folks here don’t want them. That’s why we see drier Riesling here and why most in Ontario make them on the drier side (or towards the dessert wine spectrum). I feel it’s a missed opportunity for the wine makers as the market in the US is much bigger. Seneca Lake wineries get their reputation on the more balanced style, which is why Germans coming over to visit consider that area to be serious Riesling.
Side note, wify is both a biochemist and a double taster (i feel the term “super taster” is a bit much).
Having said that, I’ve certainly picked up a few things i haven’t considered from your explanation. Thank you very much for the details! A lot of these German producers do stop the fermentation process depending on the acidity levels in the grapes to get to a more balanced wine. Due to climate change, they’ve been seeking out land in countries further north (this info is what I’ve heard from them 10~15 years or so ago). This was why i was hoping they’d be able to do so in colder and drier years as that typically yields higher acidity. If select late harvest is simply a marketing term, yields should be sufficient if conditions were right and someone was interested enough to make it.
He’s hoping that day comes sooner than later!
P.S. Thank you for letting me know about the sale. It being Feinherb and looking at the lower residual sugar mashes me hesitant to pick it up at that price point
I took a quick peek of prices at stores i frequent. Looks like pricing has gone up. Either because of its increase in popularity or increases in tax levied on European wines in the US in general. I’m hoping it’s inflation and temporary
I tend to go for wines that are no longer in fashion that are well made. But there are a select few i go for for food pairing proposes (as well as to age). This type of Riesling is one of them.
Looks like a new release of the Cave Spings Adam Steps Riesling is available:
https://cavespring.ca/individual-wine?wine=t-2020-riesling-adam-steps-bb&vintage=cur
Medium-dry, 11% alcohol. I plan to pick up a couple of bottles when passing through to the Shaw Festival next month.
For the same price of $26.95, today’s LCBO Vintage new release offers a RP: 92 pts off-dry Mosel - Bischofliche Weinguter Trier Bernkasteler Feinherb Riesling, 2020. Would be interesting to do a taste comparison?!
I tasted the superb 2019 vintage of the aforementioned wine and it was great! Paired so well with Cantonese seafood. 2020 is supposedly an equally fine vintage.
Apart from a few Cave Spring late harvest or selected late harvest Riesling, I have not come across a single Niagara Riesling with the complexity and taste that impressed me…and that includes 18 + samples presented during a winemaker dinner/Riesling tasting at NOTL’s Treadwell a while back!
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Thank you for the tip, Charles! I do enjoy Mosel Rieslings and see that this one is in stock at my local LCBO - think I might just take the taste comparison challenge …
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After tasting several Niagara Riesling, at 11% alcohol level, it looks like most of the sugar has been converted to alcohol for this batch. This will most likely taste like a dry Kabinett Trocken Riesling (Kabinett Trocken ranges from dry to off dry). It’s named Kabinett as its wine they’d keep in their cabinet for casual consumption.
Waiting for the day when they see that the grapes harvested for a certain vintage has enough acidity where they could halt the fermentation process sooner ending up with between 8 to 9.5% alcohol to get to a normal Kabinett (as opposed to the drier Trocken). It’s these wines that do better aging for 20+ years. Fingers crossed!
Seneca Lake’s Rieslings get this right and so far is the closest to German Riesling outside of Germany.
