2017 | No. 98

Why This Bottle, Really?

A Finger Lakes Riesling

By Meg Houston Maker

2014 Riesling, Magdalena Vineyard, Hermann J. Wiemer, Finger Lakes, New York, about $36.

Some grapes let you look straight through them into the place they’re grown. Riesling is the apotheosis of this. In warm Alsace or even the Rheingau, it’s friendly, smiling; in cool Austria or the Mosel, it’s steely and serene. Beneath these varied countenances lies the cocktail of racy acidity and piercing aromatics that is ur-Riesling. The rest is site.

The Finger Lakes, in western New York state, are cool, and the Rieslings that have made the region’s reputation skew predictably toward steel and minerals. There are intimations of orchard flowers and fruits, but acidity rules. So when I find opulence in a Finger Lakes Riesling, I know I’m tasting a special place.

Hermann J. Wiemer’s 24-acre Magdalena Vineyard, on the western flank of Seneca Lake, merely ten miles north of Wiemer’s home estate, boasts temperatures 5 or 6 degrees F warmer in deep winter, and ripens fruit two weeks sooner. Its variegated soils, mostly shale cut by a blade of deep limestone, conspire with its aspect, incline, exposure — and whatever other secrets the earth keeps — to form wines of ripeness, authority, and weight.

Wiemer, a pioneer of vinifera in the Finger Lakes, emigrated from the Mosel in the early 1970s, bringing Riesling with him and experimenting with other cold-tolerant varieties. In 2001, Fred Merwarth, freshly graduated from Cornell Ag, joined Wiemer as apprentice, swiftly making himself indispensable. When Wiemer retired in 2007, Merwarth and a partner acquired the holdings. Their farming methods are organic, old-fangled, and manual, and the winery produces 38 white, red, and sparkling wines. But Riesling remains its sun and moon.

Magdalena is aptly that sun, coming from the first block planted there. Harvest, by hand, begins in early September and finishes in October after multiple passes — in 2012, for example, there were 17. The fruit is meticulously sorted and whole-cluster pressed, without added sulfur, into stainless steel. The must is kept cool to preserve aromatics while ambient yeasts awaken, and it ferments into midwinter, becoming active again in May as the wine angles toward dryness, usually by mid-July. Dry, but not too; because the site is Wiemer’s ripest and Merwarth wants the alcohol below 13 percent, he leaves eight or nine grams of residual sugar in the wine, offset by glorious acidity. It is bottled unfined and unfiltered.

The long exposure to primary lees adds texture and shores up the wine for aging; Merwarth says it reaches its glory in 12 to 13 years. The 2012, a ripe vintage, has begun to reveal a finely articulated armature of reedy bone. The 2014, the current vintage, is shiny and warm-toned now, a vessel for guava and passion fruit polished by glittery acidity. The finish is languorous and forever. Beneath it all is a stratum of seriousness that age will deepen.

Magdalena likes space at the table. I love the new vintage paired simply with fresh chèvre, the springlike freshness complementary, or with aged ewe’s- and cow’s-milk cheeses or a meaty, white-fleshed fish. With age, Magdalena’s quiet savoriness suggests more delicate pairings (light poultry, raw seafood). Merwarth confessed he prefers it without food: “Magdalena, I find I just sit and enjoy it.” ●

From issue 98

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