RIESLING got a huge plug last week by one of the world’s most influential wine writers, Jancis Robinson of London, a veteran Riesling aficionado who started her San Francisco Chronicle online piece with, “I never thought it would happen but at last it has. Riesling has really and truly become popular. In fact, nowadays most people even know how to spell and pronounce it. (“REES-ling.”)” The lengthy piece, written with characteristic elegance, escorts the reader on a whirlwind worldwide tour of Riesling starting in Germany and circling the globe from Australia to South Africa , California and New York . Last fall Ms. Robinson appeared at the New York Wine & Culinary Center for a tasting and dinner, which apparently made an impression based on this article’s observation: “Upstate in the Finger Lakes, source of arguably America’s finest dry Rieslings for the last 20 years at least, producers are pinching themselves that at last their very own variety is fashionable. Riesling grape prices here have recently overtaken those of once-lauded Chardonnay, mirroring what is happening over the border in Canada .”
Read more at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/04/WIKQTSU6T.DTL”h