Riesling and pork

100 years ago, Riesling was regarded as the king of white wines. Today, that role is held by Chardonnay and Riesling has largely been relegated to the shelf for other less popular varietals like Gewurztraminer, Chenin Blanc and others. Part of Riesling’s decline was probably due in large part that many of them are not bone dry, and most people think that they[re supposed to like dry wines and eschew off-dry and sweet wines. The real irony in this is that many of the top selling, inexpensive brands of Chardonnay are in fact fairly sweet. When I was in the wine business in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Kendall Jackson was a top selling brand of Chardonnay and it was decidedly sweet, but the average consumer who bought it didn’t know it and felt good about themselves for being sophisticated enough to be buying a Good dry” wine like Chardonnay. Further proof that the majority of us like dry wine because we’re told we’re supposed to.

I am not anti-Chardonnay, although it is a relief to see that people have branched out into other varietals. Who would have dreamt 15 years ago that Viognier would become a popular wine? But Riesling still sits in the side lines waiting for to get back in the game. The honest truth is that Riesling’s sweetness and i’s balancing acidity make it an incredibly friendly wine with so many types of food. It’s often recommended for spicy and hot food, which isn’t a bad call (although I’d still opt for a good beer with most hot and spicy dishes), but it also goes very well with more traditional fare. Pork and Riesling is a classic (perhaps because of the importance of both in German and Alsatian food). It’s also interesting to note how pork has fallen from favor in American Haute Cuisine, Next time you’re perusing a cookbook by a famous chef from a famous restaurant, look for the pork recipes if you want to get an idea of the regard that pork has.

I felt like doing some real cooking today. Nothing too fancy but involved enough so I felt like I was cooking. Of course the temperature had started to creep back up so it required food that needed little indoor cooking. I had bought a whole pork loin recently and had sliced most of it into thick loin chops but kept two pieces as smaller roast. Chops sounded like a good idea. Since they were thick enough I decided to stuff them ith a combination of fresh sage, grana padano cheese, toasted almonds, and garlic. The ingredients were all minced and I added a little bit of olive oil to help bind it.

We made a quick trip to the supermarket to get some much needed produce and bought some beautiful fennel, some apricums (I assume a cross of apricot and plums), and scallions. The fennel would be thin sliced on a mandolin and tossed with lemon juice and olive oil, and served raw. I thought about tossing the scallions with olive oil and giving them a quick car on the grill (similar to how spring onions are cooked in Spain). The apricums would become a chutney. I took equal parts of white wine vinegar, water, and sugar and added it to a pan along with a cinnamon stick, a couple of cardamom cloves, and a hole allspice. I reduced this to a syrup and let it cool and then grated some fresh ginger into it and tossed the cut up apricums with that. I decided to toss some cut up red potatoes in olive oil, rosemary and garlic and wrap them in a foil packet on the grill.

What to drink with all of this? Riesling, naturally. I picked up a 2006 Barnard Griffin Washington Riesling and also had a special one to pull out: a 1989 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese from J.J. Prum. I’ve had this wine since its release. It had been properly stored. Many people would be skeptical of such an old Riesling but JJ Prum makes some of the longest lived German Rieslings, and I’ve had similarly aged ones from great vintages that were quite remarkable. Spatlese is actually fairly sweet, but is still considered a dinner wine and not a dessert wine. I thought that the natural sweetness of the pork and the sweet sour flavors of the chutney would make it work. The fennel had its own sweetness but would also have the slight tartness of the lemon to work as counterpoint. The typical peach and honey aromas and flavors of the Riesling would also work the fruit in the chutney. It sounded like we had a winner, so I went and lit the Weber and started to get it all together.

The two Rieslings couldn’t have been more different, but they also show two distinctly different aspects of this grape. The Barnard Griffin was from 2006 and was light, vibrant, and full of intense fruit and honey aromas. It had good acidity to balance the slight sweetness. It wasn’t a “serious” wine but it was a quite delicious wine. It was approachable and good drinking for hot weather. The JJ Prum on the other hand was very complex and had a lot more going on. It was pale gold and had a rich aroma of
honey, apricot, vanilla, slate, and a hint of smoke that was vaguely reminiscent of a great Sauternes. It was still distinctly Riesling, but had a complexity that younger wines just don’t have. On the palate it was rich and slightly sweet with rich honeyed fruit flavors but still had enough acidity to finish that it didn’t seem like I as drinking a dessert wine. It was a classic expression of German Riesling and one of the most remarkable white wines I’ve ever tasted. The only other white wines I’ve ever had that had the same complexity that comes with age were several vintages of Marquis de Murrieta White Riojas from the 1940’s and 1950’s that I was lucky enough to taste in a tasting in the late 1980’s. All this from a bottle I bought for under $15 in 1991. But how would they hold up to the food?

Not surprisingly, the JJ Prum won out but not for the reason I thought it would. It was the more complex and profound wine, but it was the sweetness that made it work with the food. The chutney was sweet and a little spicy from the ginger and the sweetness of the wine worked with that. The chutney was such an important part of the meal that it required a sweeter wine. The Barnard Griffin is a very good wine and I would absolutely buy it again, but this is an example of a meal where sweet wine worked better than drier wine. On paper, this wasn’t an exotic type of meal that would normally point people towards a sweeter wine, but this time it worked.

Should you age most Rieslings? I’d have to say no, but it’s a good reason of why you should stock up on great Rieslings from great producers in great vintages. Stash them away and then show your “dry wine” loving friends what a great sweeter wine can do for a meal.