Wines made from Sylvaner grapes of Rheingau
Discover the best wines made with Sylvaner as a single variety or as a blend of Rheingau.
The sylvaner is grown mainly in Germany and Alsace. The buds are somewhat cottony and the young leaves are green. The same applies to the ribbed branches. Once mature, the dominant colour is golden-green and small elliptical berries with small to medium-sized bunches can be seen. The ripe fruit is then adorned by five-lobed leaves. This variety is susceptible to chlorosis, gray mold, powdery mildew and mildew. It is also sensitive to frost and wind because of its long branches. It can be grown in any kind of soil, although it prefers stony, sandy and light soils. It is indeed moderately acidic and offers a complex set of aromas such as bitter almond, fruity and floral background. The taste has an excellent mixture of honey and candied or dried fruits.
Rheingau is one of the most important of Germany's 13 Anbaugebiete wine regions. However it is far from the biggest; with 3,076 hectares (7,600 acres) of Vineyard">Vineyards documented in 2012, its output is around one tenth of that from the Pfalz and Rheinhessen regions. Located on the Rhine a 20-minute drive west of Frankfurt, the -gau suffix denotes that it was once a county of the Frankish Empire. The classic Rheingau wine is a DryRiesling with pronounced Acidity and aromas of citrus fruits and smoke-tinged minerality – typically more "masculine" than its equivalent from the Mosel.
I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...
Starting with the 2021 vintage, non-late harvest Alsace Riesling must be ‘dry’, as defined by EU regulations, according to a proposed decree agreed by a two-thirds majority of the Alsace Winegrowers’ Association (AVA). Winemakers backed the plan at a vote in Colmar last week, although it requires approval from France’s appellation body, INAO. The move comes in addition to the introduction of a standardised way of communicating sweetness levels on Alsace AOC still wines. As per EU rul ...
Altos de Pinto Bandeira, located in Brazil’s southern Serra Gaúcha wine region, has been recognised as a DO for traditional method sparkling wines. The new DO, which is the first in the New World that’s exclusively for sparkling wines, was announced on 29 November 2022. The first wines labelled DO Altos de Pinto Bandeira will arrive in the market this year. The move follows 10 years of campaigning and research by the Pinto Bandeira Wine Producers Association (Asprovinho). It worked with bodies i ...