Wine with Leslie: Three rieslings to try, including one you need to taste at least once in your life

Irish Examiner

25-04-2025

Memory is a curious thing, a brief moment can live with us forever. The first sight and smell of a newborn, where we were when we heard a loved one or famous person died, and occasionally our first taste of something remarkable.
On a warm autumn evening in 1996 in the rooftop garden of my cousin's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan I was offered a glass of Joh Jos Prüm Riesling. I had heard of the producer (all wine nerds have), but had never tasted their wines. I can still taste it to this day, the sweet apple, lemon and tropical fruit flavours on the palate and the clean wet slate acidity that balanced the sweetness allowing both sweet and sharp flavours to linger and linger. I fell in love.
Prüm wines held their first Dublin masterclass recently where we tasted Kabinett, Spätlese and Auslese from different vintages and vineyard sites at varying levels of steepness. I was as thrilled by the lemon-lime cool vintage 2021 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett as by the yellow peach and apple pie intensity of the Graacher Himmelreich Auslese (the 2013 a little more defined than the 2022). Expect to find honeysuckle, jasmine, lime, peach and apple aromas, fleshy stone fruits mixed with sweet lemon on the palate. Note that unlike many rieslings, Prüm wines do not have paraffin or diesel aromas.
Prüm wines all have sweetness but also balancing knife-edge acidity making them excellent food wines. Prüm's Carine Patricio led us through the wines and, as an award-winning sommelier, she offered food matches such as Thai, Vietnamese and Sichuan cuisine, Moroccan lamb tagine, sushi, caviar, oysters and various cheeses, especially blue.
Three rieslings to try below, I also like the Arthur Metz Riesling in Dunnes at €10.
Tûrk Riesling Kremser Weinberge 2020, Kremstal, Austria €16
Austrian riesling is often more elegant and subtle than those found in Germany and Alsace and is well worth exploring (e.g. Diwald, Brandl, Wieninger, Wachau). Floral, citrus, apple aromas with a pristine dry palate that somehow envelopes its flinty fruits in a fleshy floral shell giving the wine texture as well as vibrancy. The Türk Grüner Veltliner range is also recommended. Reduced from €25.
Robert Weil Riesling Trocken, Rheingau, Germany €23.95
Weingut Robert Weil was founded in 1874 and were soon supplying all the European courts. In more recent times, they helped drag riesling into the modern world by pioneering dry (trocken) food-friendly wines.
This is bone dry with apple, lemongrass and a touch of floral — textured on the palate with a saline flinty character and a pleasing rounded finish.
Joh Jos Prüm Bernkasteler Badstube Kabinett Riesling, Mosel €53
JJ Prüm wines from the Mosel are legendary and you need to taste them at least once in your life.
From a 40-65% gradient slope on slate soils, this has fascinating honey, peach and wet slate aromas mixed with lime and honeysuckle flowers.
Focused and clean palate with lemon candy mixing with Mirabelle plums and any sweetness offset by slate acidity. Stunning.
MacCurtain Wine Cellar; Sweeneys; Whelehans; 64 Wines
Spirit of the week: Blackwater 'The Full Irish' Small Batch, 48.5% ABV, €55
Blackwater 'The Full Irish' Small Batch
Blackwater Distillery are nothing if not creative (e.g. Tanora Gin). This is made from every grain permitted, a blend of 45% pot still, 45% single malt, 10% grain, and finished in Imperial Stout casks from Waterford's Hopfully.
Aromas of dark honey and caramel, creamy, nutty, smooth palate with a pepper and spice finish, properly complex and hugely enjoyable.
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