Wines of the week: Riesling’s star is rising

M&S Classics No.2 Riesling, Pfalz, Germany 2023 (£10, Marks & Spencer)

Riesling, in all its silvery, fine-pointed, dashingly incisive brilliance, so dominates the scene in German wine it can be hard for other grape varieties to get a look in. But while I would never want to give up on such fleet-footed summery white delights as Staffelter Hof Magnus Riesling 2023 (£19.50, Wayward Wines) from the dramatic, steep slate slopes of the Mosel Valley, with its coursing mineral freshness and pristine citrus, or the peachy succulence and limey tang of  from the Pfalz over the border from France’s Alsace, this is a wine culture with so much else to offer. Its reds, particularly those made from spätburgunder (aka pinot noir) are increasingly a match for Burgundy – and I’ll be picking out some of my favourites in another column later in the summer. On the white side, meanwhile, there’s the refreshingly dry, pithy grapefruity zing and dazzle of scheurebe, the base of M&S Found Scheurebe 2024 (£9), another fine Pfalz at M&S from the same talented winemaker, Gerd Stepp, arriving in stores in June.

Weingut Eymann Vom Löss Grauburgunder, Pfalz, Germany 2023 (£13.95, The Wine Society) 

German winemakers have also got much more skilled in recent years with a grape variety that is more associated with northern Italy, pinot grigio, aka grauburgunder. The Co-op’s budget example from the Pfalz, Kleine Kapelle Pinot Grigio 2024 (£6.95) is the kind of gently floral, pear-juicy easy-drinker that has made the Italian iteration such a popular MOR supermarket staple – at 11% abv it’s just the thing for summer parties or a post-work, straight-from-the-fridge-door glass. But, as Weingut Eymann’s bottling from vines grown on silty-sandy “löss” (loess) soils shows, the variety is also capable of something much deeper, finer and more complex. It’s a wine that balances ripples of cool-river freshness with succulent quince and ripe apple and a fleshy fullness of texture, that would go so well with roast chicken, herby pork chops or a spring pea risotto, and which is closer in style to an Alsace pinot gris (French for pinot grigio) while being fully its own, German grauburgunder thing.

Diemersdal Grüner Veltliner, Durbanville, South Africa 2024 (£13, or £12.50 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, Majestic)

Historically, riesling has been the star in Austria, too, although in recent years, grüner veltliner has, arguably, become the home-grown variety that most wine drinkers around the world think of first when they think of the country’s white wines. The prolific Markus Huber Winery is the name behind many of the UK supermarkets’ own-label grüners, among them Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Grüner Veltliner 2023 (£11) from Traisental. With its breezy presentation of crisp apple, white peach and subtle celery salt and leafy herbiness, it’s as good a place as any to begin a grüner exploration that might then lead you to such scintillating, subtly white pepper-seasoned, fluent examples as Schloss Gobelsburg Grüner Veltliner Löss, 2023 (£23, Tanners), a dry white, like the Eymann, that comes from loess soils in the vineyards of one of Austria’s best-run and most historic wineries in Kamptal. The breakout success of Austrian grüner has inevitably led to growers elsewhere in the world attempting their own versions, and I was impressed by a new addition to the Majestic range from South Africa, a convincingly grüner-y fleshily stone-fruited white that proves it can work well in the Cape.