Deinhard - Piesporter Hot, Piesporter Cold
Written: Oct 25 '00 (Updated Nov 04 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap
Cons: Bad
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| stonehousellc's Full Review: Deinhard Piesporter Riesling Mosel Saar Ruwer 1998 |
I have loved the wines of Germany for as long as I can remember. So, at the urging of my greatest fan, me, I am going to take on the task of disseminating, through my next few posts, what I hope will be interesting and helpful information on one type and vintage of German wine near and dear to my heart: Piesporter.
Lets begin with a little information about the wine in general. No single designation has been subjected to greater uncontrolled abuse than Piesporter. First of all, it should come from Riesling grapes grown in the relatively small area around the village of Piesport. That may seem logical to you and I, and the fact that German wine is amongst the most tightly regulated on earth might make it seem a matter of fact as well. Unfortunately there are several large producers of lesser wines who avoid the regulation by making the word Piesporter a part of their trade name, selling swill and defrauding the under educated wine drinker.
The word Piesporter should appear in the long string of words under the trade name. That string may look something like Riesling Auslese Mosel-Saar-Ruwer Piesporter Goldtropfchen. It could also be much longer. But rest assured, each and every word has a specific meaning, regulated by law, and as close to a guarantee of degree of quality as anything you will ever see on a wine label.
All German wines are designated by quality and the ripeness of the grapes at harvest. The general categories in ascending order – Tafelwein, Qualitätswein and Qualitätswein mit Prädikat – will appear on the label. Once you reach the highest levels of quality a secondary designation is allowed to show the minute differences in the wine produced. Again in ascending order - kabinett, spätlese, auslese, beerenauslese, trockenbeerenauslese and eiswein – with the last three being sweet, sweeter and sweetest.
When reading German wine labels remember the order of things and it becomes much easier. Grape, secondary quality if any, region, sub-region, vineyard.
For the first Piesporter I have chosen the Gallo of Germany– Deinhart – given revenue perhaps Gallo should be called the Deinhart of the US. This is a passable wine, actually made from grapes grown in and around Piesport. That’s the last positive. It is a Tafelwein or table wine of acceptable quality and flavor, but lacking any distinctiveness. Its fruitiness overpowers, with bitteresque apricots and not yet ripe nectarines. While some might call it crisp, I just call it biting.
Color wise, it is very much on the green side, and that’s not a side you want your Piesporter to be on. It is also a thin wine, not much more viscous than simple tap water. Again, not where you want your Piesporter to be. Being so green and so thin, this wine has absolutely nowhere to go and nothing to be gained from age. The wine drinking public would be better served if this swill were simply offered as a generic Riesling thus leaving the fine folk of Piesport out of it. As a generic Riesling it is no better, but at least hopes don’t get raised and then dashed. It would just be, in some way, kinder, I think.
It is available in almost every wine shop of any size, as Deinhart has very good distribution channels to the US. It is also attractively priced. That is why it sells so well, thereby promulgating the widely held view that German wine is of a lesser quality. If you get nothing else from this post, please get this – The upper end of German wines are without peer, fine and delicate representations of the winemakers craft. Deinhart even exports some very fine German wines to this country. This Piesporter just isn’t one of them.
Stay tuned to these pages, as over the next few weeks I will be posting on some of the best Piesporters currently available in wine stores and web-stores.
Recommended:
No
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stonehousellc
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Location: Nashville, TN
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