Rieslings of the World, Unite!

Movie stars and hillbilly singers have their fan clubs, and grape varieties now seem to need them, too.

Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) has evolved from a small band pf wineries trying to rescue the reputation of the red variety of this wine from obscurity into the world’s largest gathering of drunken white people, every January in San Francisco. The annual Rhone Rangers tastings were built on the same model and are headed the same way. There are a number of quasi-religious Pinot Noir celebrations each year, at which the devoted spend time escalating their descriptive adjectives and congratulating each other on how hip they are. For the truly hard-core, there’s PS I Love You, hoping to transform Petite Sirah from an obscure, minor grape variety into a well-known minor grape variety. (These comments are offered by someone who has actively participated in all of these efforts, including writing a book about a pioneering Petite Sirah producer.)

But now, finally, comes the one Blind Muscat has been salivating for: The International Riesling Foundation, formed November 30 at a meeting in San Francisco after being officially incorporated in Washington state a couple weeks before. Here’s the full press release.

The aim is to pull together Riesling producers from all over the globe to celebrate this amazing grape and its wines, get it more exposure, shelf space and wine list prominence, and—trickiest of all—lead in figuring out a way to let consumers know what amount of residual sugar they will find in the bottle. (You may or may not be aware that the great majority of the world’s Rieslings, including Germany’s, are made bone dry.)

The folks behind this initiative are, naturally enough, some big corporate players: Château Ste. Michelle, Kendall-Jackson, and Constellation Brands, which hosted the founding meeting. But those are exactly the folks with the resources do leverage Riesling’s inherent wonderfulness into greater visibility and market share. The zillions of tiny, artisanal Riesling makers may make great wines, but cannot, alas, make many waves by themselves.

It’s too early to know how far this effort will go. But it has prompted Blind Muscat to chill a fine 2005 Schmitt-Wagner Longuicher Maximiner Herrenberg Riesling Spätlese Feinherb from the Mosel for tonight’s dinner. Makes me thirsty just saying that a couple times.

Rieslings lovers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your Chardonnay!