SUMMER pudding is not the easiest food to pair with wine. However, as your intrepid wine-merchant, I have scoured the shelves of dusty basement drinks emporiums and even the occasional supermarket to find you a suitable tipple.
In my mind, only one style works with this type of dessert, and that’s a good sweet wine from Germany. German Riesling stands tall amongst the finest white wines in the world, but it still doesn’t get the respect and attention it deserves in Scotland. This is definitely a style you should explore and I’m convinced that, given the right bottle, you will come to love it like I do.
Here’s a quick guide to help you work out what to look for from the occasionally confusing labels.
The label should mention the producer, the vintage, and the grape and it should also give an indication of the style of the wine.
Producers to look out for include Willi Haag, Donnhoff, Louis Guntrum and Leitz.
The grape will usually be Riesling, but you can also find decent Gewurztraminers, Sylvaners and Weissburgunders. Some areas such as Baden also produce good Pinot Noirs, often labelled as Spatburgunder. As a leftfield suggestion, you could try one of these light reds chilled with your summer pudding.
You can tell the style of the wine by looking out for one of these terms … Kabinett, Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese or Trockenbeerenauslese. Firstly this indicates that you have the highest quality of German wine in your hand, and secondly it gives you an idea of the level of sweetness. Kabinett is usually quite dry, Spatlese (late harvest) a bit sweeter and so on up to the very lush Trockenbeerenauslese. Confusingly, trocken means dry, but it doesn’t refer to the wine in this case, rather the grapes which have dried out on the vine due to the excessively late harvest. This concentrates the sugars and makes for a sweeter wine as a result.
A handy trick is to look at the ABV (alcohol by volume) as the lusher, sweeter styles will have a lower ABV. So, if the wine is 7.5 per cent, it will be very sweet, and if it’s up at 12 per cent, it will be dry.
So, now that you know what to look for, here are a couple to try this weekend.
Willi Haag Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese 2016 7.5 per cent ABV (Waitrose, £18.99 limited availability). This delightful Riesling comes from the Mosel where there is a long-standing tradition of putting a sundial (Sonnenuhr) in the best vineyards so that the grape-pickers know when it was time to stop for lunch. This means that if the label mentions a Sonnenuhr, it should be a good wine in the bottle.
Louis Guntrum Oppenheimer Herrenberg Riesling Auslese 2007 9.5 per cent ABV (Inverarity One to One, £17.99 very limited availability). Rheinhessen as a region doesn’t have the reputation of its neighbour Rheingau.
This means that if you find a good producer from Rheinhessen, the wine will be great value. This is a rare opportunity to try a wine of this calibre from such a mature vintage at such a good price.
Pete Stewart is Glasgow director of Inverarity One To One, 185a Bath Street, Glasgow (0141 221 5121) www.inverarity121.com
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