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Wine myths

All Riesling is sweet

“Riesling is a sweet wine.”

Not true

Most Riesling made today is dry. Germany’s own production is majority dry, and Alsace, Austria and Australia make it dry almost exclusively.

The full answer

Riesling spans the entire sweetness range, from bone dry to lusciously sweet, and the dry end is now the larger part of production in its heartland.

German labelling is the practical problem. "Trocken" means dry and "Halbtrocken" or "Feinherb" off-dry, but a Kabinett or Spätlese without one of those words can be dry or sweet depending on the producer, and the ripeness levels in the Prädikat system describe the sugar in the grapes, not the sweetness of the wine.

Alsace, Austria, Australia’s Clare and Eden Valleys, and Washington all make Riesling that is overwhelmingly dry.

Riesling’s high acidity also disguises sugar. A wine with noticeable residual sugar and very high acidity can taste far drier than the numbers suggest, which is why sweetness in Riesling is a balance question rather than a measurement one.

What is true underneath it

The cheap German exports that shaped the British market for decades — Liebfraumilch above all — were sweet, and they were made from other grapes entirely.

This correction is a regional convention

What producers in a particular place conventionally do. Distinct from a regulated requirement: convention is what happens, regulation is what is compulsory, and confusing the two is one of the commonest errors in regional wine writing.

What would settle it: Documented practice in the region diverging from the stated convention.

Sources

Sources consulted