Drink This Now! Lesson 5

     This week I did the Drink This Now! Lesson 5 content. The objective of this is to taste dry and sweet rieslings and to determine the differences from opposite ends of the spectrum. When I went to Vintage Cellar to acquire my wines, I was brought over to the FunF sweet riesling from Germany which was a perfect match to the book. However, even though they didn't have an exact match to any of the dry rieslings, they directed me to something very similar, which was the Schmitt Söhne Dry Riesling from Germany. I also went to Kroger and picked up some unsalted table water crackers in order to cleanse my palate between the wine tastings. 

    The first thing I needed to do (Step 1) was set aside a room temperature glass of each wine while the bottles went in the fridge to chill for 45-60 minutes. After chilling there should be 4 glasses of wine: each of the two wines will have a warm and chilled glass of wine.

    The first wine I set aside was Schmitt Söhne Dry Riesling, which is produced by Schmitt Söhne Family Wines along the Mosel River in Germany. There is no vintage year for this wine, and the price was $6.95. It uses 100% Riesling grapes.

Wine Review:

 

    The second wine I set aside was the FunF wine produced by Schmitt Söhne 5 Riesling in Germany. This wine has no listed vintage year, and the price was $6.95. It is made of 100% Riesling grapes.

 

Wine Review:

Step 2 was to take out the chilled wines and assess them for aroma and taste.

 Schmitt Söhne Dry Riesling: This wine had a slight nose of mandarin. It tasted of green apple, strawberry with an aftertaste of red grapes and was slightly sweet and acidic, mostly dry with no tannins and a light body.

 FunF: This wine had a slight nose of apples. It had an initially watery taste with hints of apple, pineapple, peach and an aftertaste of raspberries. It was sweet, acidic, slightly dry with no tannins.

Step 3 was to compare the warm wines to their cool counterparts and record all impressions.

Step 4 was to go back and forth a few times, continuing to cleanse the palate with crackers and water if needed.

 

Step 5 was to try and determine what changed between the warm and cold glasses of each wine and write out descriptors you picked out for each. 

    When assessing the glasses of dry riesling, I noticed that there were definitely more sour notes (green apple?) when the wine was cold. The warm wine was also more smooth and fruity. While cold, this wine seemed a lot more dry than when warm.

    For the sweet riesling I noticed that the cold glass had more notes of sweet pineapple and possibly peach, while the warm glass was more sweet, acidic, and had more appley-pear notes.

This lesson taught me a lot about the difference between sweet and dry wines, and I don't think I would've had this type of experience in the future had it not been for this lesson, allowing me to directly compare and contrast the two. The chilled and unchilled wines also really had a difference in taste and character, so I'm glad that was part of the lesson too. I'm excited to try more sweet wines in the future, because I noticed that I enjoyed the FunF wine a lot more than the Dry Riesling and I don't often go out of my way to buy sweet wines, but I'm thinking now that I should.