Riesling

Riesling is all about balance. This wine walks a tightrope between sugar and acid. Too much of either and it becomes either overpoweringly sweet or mouth-puckering sour. Yet when the balance is right, it is a pleasing wine for summer - an excellent companion for cold seafood, spicy salads, even barbecued ribs. As I sampled 18 foreign and domestic rieslings recently, I found many that fell off the tightrope, and several that succeeded. rob.kasper@baltsun.com How they fared Favorite Foreign Albert Seltz 2006 Vin D'Alsace Mittelbergheim, France 13 percent alcohol by volume, $16.99 Local distributor: Bacchus Importers Lean and clean, this pale white from Alsace had crisp, subtle fruit flavors.

If you're looking for a bargain, check back another week, If you're looking for a superb dessert treat to follow the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, this decadently wonderful wine justifies its price tag. It's patterned on the rare and wonderful beerenauslese dessert wines of Germany, and if it's any consolation, it's cheap by comparison. This nectar is packed with flavors of honey, winter spices, apricots, pear, apple and pineapple — then followed with penetrating acidity that keeps the fun going.

This elegant white wine, a collaboration of Chateau Ste. Michelle and Germany's Dr. Loosen winery, shows the enormous potential of Washington state riesling. It's a powerful wine -- mostly dry but with enough residual sugar to ward off severity -- with a great deal of the elegance found in a top-notch Rhine. It displays a complex blend of pear, mineral, cherry, sweet pea and citrus flavors and finishes with a hint of spritz. Serve with roast turkey and spicy Asian dishes.

Just one sip is all it takes. That first swallow explodes with flavors not usually attributed to the grape: Arugula, sugar snap peas, moss, heather, lentils. There is a bracing and refreshing minerality, plus a weight on the palate that belies its flavor profile. The wine is surprisingly dense and chewy for an unoaked white wine. Just one sip will take you by surprise, but so will its name: gruner veltliner (grooner-velt-leaner). It's a struggle to verbalize, but not to internalize.

From: Washington Price: $12 Serve with: Shellfish, Thai or Vietnamese cuisine This pioneering Washington state winery long has been known for its rieslings, but until this year its dry version of the famous German white varietal had been sold only in the Pacific Northwest. It's good to see it go national because it's a crisp, fruity version that is quite dry but not overly severe. There's plenty of complexity here - apple, peach, pear, spices, coconut and minerals - and stylishness, too, for the price.

If you're very sophisticated and demand only complex, dry wines, see you next week. This white wine is definitely on the sweet side, and you don't need a cryptologist to decode the message that this wine is all about the fruit (and a great price). It's pure riesling - with loads of citrus, peach, melon, tropical fruit, honey and all those decadent flavors. It's not so sweet it can't be served with the right foods, but it has enough residual sugar that it might appeal to some young people making the transition from shooters and soda pop. Serve with Thai green papaya salad, satay or roast turkey.

This lightly sweet, low-alcohol (8.5 percent) German riesling is ideal for casual summertime quaffing. Its acidity balances out the sugar so that there's nothing cloying about it. It boasts lively and penetrating flavors of honey, apples, peaches, cherries and minerals, as well as a pleasingly creamy texture. The screw cap makes it convenient for picnics. Serve with spicy fried chicken, Southeast Asian cuisine.

In the world of white wines, riesling rules. Forget your over-oaked, overpriced chardonnays. For sheer class in a glass, nothing compares with Germany's celebrated white-wine grape. No other white grape offers such crystalline clarity. No other so faithfully translates the soul of the soil into liquid expression. This is never more apparent than when Germany's Rhine, Nahe and Mosel-Saar-Ruwer (MSR below) regions enjoy a superb vintage - as they did in 1999. The results of that warm, sunny summer can be tasted now; fine examples of the vintage are abundant in better wine stores.

Let us now all raise our glasses of chardonnay and drink a toast to the most complex, most illustrious, most versatile white-wine grape in all of creation.Ladies and gentlemen, I give you -- riesling.Riesling?You betcha.Forget all the hype about chardonnay. That's merely French propaganda. Without a heavy dose of oak flavor, chardonnay seldom produces celestial wine. On its own, chardonnay is a rather bland character.Riesling needs no seasoning to produce spectacular wines. And where chardonnay is almost exclusively used to produce dry table wines, the noble riesling can excel at every sugar level -- from bone-dry to call-your-dentist sweet.

Fine German riesling is perhaps best explained as one of God's little jokes. Here you have some of the world's most crystalline, delicate, sprightly wines, and most of them are sporting names that sound as if they were lifted straight out of one of the kaiser's more belligerent military directives. Can you imagine going into a wine store and casually asking a clerk to bring you a case of Adolf Weingart Ohlenberg Bopparder Hamm Riesling Spatlese? Say it again, faster this time.

It's quiz time! Time to gauge your wine savvy. Below you will find a host of questions on topics covered these past seven months. See how much you've absorbed... information-wise! 1. "Pride of the Wineries: A California Living Book" stated that this wine is "for people who like to sleep on the ground, play rugby, climb mountains, eat brussel sprouts and do other things in which some punishment is part of the pleasure. " They were referencing… a. Cabernet Sauvignon b. Syrah c. Merlot d. Zinfandel 2. What grape has the following flavor profile: peach, quince, apricot, apple and pear with intriguing hints of clotted cream, crème fraiche and buttermilk followed by aromas of ripe grain, strawflower, marzipan and toasted nuts?

In a Canton basement lit by fluorescent lights, a dozen glass jugs of fermenting grape juice share space with a washer, dryer and furnace. Standing before them, Erik Bandzak surveys his wines: two deep reds made from a Rougeon grape and an Isabella blackberry blend, which every few minutes emit tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide through their glass air locks. A glass hydrometer, an instrument that gauges a wine's sugar content, measures his Rougeon at about 0.99. "That's what I want it at," Bandzak says.

Is this expensive for a dry Riesling? Yes. But this happens to be one of California's finest white wines and one of the world's best dry Riesling's this side of Alsace. It's a bone-dry wine with tremendous crystalline strength and clarity, with flavors of pear, citrus, slate, herbs, smoke and kerosene (a positive note, really). It's a complex wine with a terrific, lingering finish, and it will age better than 95 percent of California's white wines. From: Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley Price: $22 Serve with: Sushi, shellfish, spicy Asian cuisine

If you like a fine dry white wine but don't care for the heavy-handed oak found in many chardonnays or the herbal bite of many sauvignon blancs, this may be the wine for you. Forget the prevailing image of riesling as sweet wine. This is dry without being severe, a crisp and flavorful wine at a most attractive price. It displays classic riesling flavors of tart apple, peach, minerals and lime. Its finish is long and satisfying for an under-$10 wine. Great value! — Michael Dresser Wine Find: 2009 Chateau Ste. Michelle Dry Riesling From: Columbia Valley, Wash.

This very dry, steely Riesling exemplifies the Australian style with this varietal. It's a flavorful white wine with hints of sweet pea, herbs, white pepper and slate. Its touch of severity is offset by a bracing intensity and long finish. Fine value, with a crew cap. — Michael Dresser 2008 Cat Among the Pigeons Riesling From: Barossa Valley, Australia Price: $13 Serve with: White-fleshed fish, shellfish

2007 Hugel Riesling From: Alsace, France Price: $18 Serve with: Pork and sauerkraut, seafood The phrase "opulent austerity" would seem to be an oxymoron, but devotees of riesling from France's Alsace region will understand that description of this fine release from Hugel. At first sip, this is a clean, elegant, bone-dry white wine with distinct mineral nuances. But as it opens up, it reveals the intense citrus and apple fruit underneath. This is quite young for an Alsace riesling, and this wine could develop in fascinating ways over the next three or four years.

Each great wine region has a defining vintage every decade or so. In Bordeaux, the most recent was 2000; in the Napa Valley 1997. For Germany, 2001 is in the same class. The fruit is dramatic, the clarity is crystalline and the wines grip the palate without putting it in an acidic stranglehold. No serious wine enthusiast should miss a chance to sample these wines. Unfortunately, Maryland's enjoyment of the 2001 vintage has been hampered by distribution problems experienced by Terry Theise, the nation's premier importer of German wines.

Warning: Availability of this wine might be limited because I've bought every bottle I can afford. It is simply the finest value in white wine I have tasted in years, not to mention the greatest spatlese I have ever tasted from the Rheinhessen.It ripples across the palate like cool fire, electrifying the taste buds with layer upon layer of flavor: apple, pear, minerals, honey and spices. The acid balances out the residual sugar so well that while it feels sweet, it tastes dry. I'm saving a bottle or two for Thanksgiving turkey dinner.

Riesling is all about balance. This wine walks a tightrope between sugar and acid. Too much of either and it becomes either overpoweringly sweet or mouth-puckering sour. Yet when the balance is right, it is a pleasing wine for summer - an excellent companion for cold seafood, spicy salads, even barbecued ribs. As I sampled 18 foreign and domestic rieslings recently, I found many that fell off the tightrope, and several that succeeded. rob.kasper@baltsun.com How they fared Favorite Foreign Albert Seltz 2006 Vin D'Alsace Mittelbergheim, France 13 percent alcohol by volume, $16.99 Local distributor: Bacchus Importers Lean and clean, this pale white from Alsace had crisp, subtle fruit flavors.