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An acquaintance of mine once made a personal study of the great vineyards of Germany. His methodology: put whatever stones or soil he found there into his mouth, taste, and compare. Maybe he was part chicken and had some sort of vestigial gizzard, but – especially given that he was a dentist – it didn’t strike me as the sanest activity. So what sort of oenofetish would drive an otherwise rational wine lover to gnaw on dirt? There’s only one likely culprit: riesling, the grape that tastes like rocks.

Assuming one is moved to start talking about wine – for a living, or just to bore the crap out of your friends – most conversations eventually come around to fruit. The flavors you’ll find in wines include cherry, blackberry, plum, grapefruit, gooseberry, apricot…well, the list goes on (and on). Sometimes, better analogies are to veggies, flowers, and other things that grow.

But of the realm of wines that taste less like the plants and more like the stuff they’re grown in, riesling is king of ’em all. It’s a grape that, at times, may deliver vague suggestions of apple, a light alpine flower or two, or perhaps a nod in the general direction of some distant tropical fruit. But for the most part, it has very little inherent taste at all. What it does have is a keen interest in geology.

There are many grapes that are highly reflective of the site on which they’re grown, but riesling is just about the most “transparent” of them all. Unlike chardonnay (another quite pellucid grape), its winemakers hardly ever succumb to the impulse to burden it with the domineering flavors of new oak. So why does riesling taste like rocks? Theories abound. Contrary to traditional wine mythology, it’s probably not because actual vineyard minerals are showing up in the grapes. But apart from that, who knows? Hell, maybe my gravel-munching friend was hot on the trail, before he chipped a bicuspid.

Riesling ages. When it’s only average, it hangs in there for five or ten years. When it’s really good, the decades add up pretty quickly. And when it’s both terrific and extremely sweet, there’s very little chance that any of us will outlive it. Unless, of course, we swallow too many stones along the way.

The high acidity of riesling means it can stand up to crisp, high-acid cuisine, but can also slash through fat and cream like a razor. It has a ravenous affinity for pork of almost any type (a characteristic it shares with the author) and white asparagus, but fish, poultry, and root vegetables all work well. Tomatoes do not.

And now, if you’re ready for a little oral geology of your own, here’s a short primer on the where and the who of it:

Germany, as previously noted, is pretty much the fatherland of riesling. It used to be that the pride of the country rested with low-alcohol wines that demonstrated a brilliant poise between acidity and light sweetness, but these days Germany succeeds with every style in the book: sparkling, dry, off-dry, and sweet. Of the many German sub-regions in which riesling is grown, the most important are the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer (currently being shortened to Mosel; it’s about the only thing on German labels that could be called “short”), Rheingau, Nahe, and Pfalz. And that’s about as far as this column is going to go, because if I started explaining the ridiculously precise-yet-misleading German label nomenclature, we’d still be here when those really sweet rieslings were coming around to full maturity. Better, for now, to start with a few of the many excellent producers – JJ Prüm, Dönnhoff, Selbach-Oster, and Kesseler – and let their wines work their mineral magic. Then buy the fifteen volume explanatory text and Rosetta Stone…

The rest of the Germanic (and post-Germanic) world also does brilliant work with riesling. Austria specializes in a structured, ageable, and quite dry style from top producers like Nigl, Bründlmayer, Prager, and Salomon. And just across the border from Germany, France’s historically-disputed Alsace region puts up what is probably the best challenge to Germany’s worldwide riesling supremacy, with powerful, full-bodied wines that are no less age-worthy than their German counterparts. The region gained fame through the strength of its dry rieslings (plus a limited supply of luxuriously sweet interpretations), but taste trends and global warming have moved a number of the region’s producers into a decidedly off-dry realm. The best names include Boxler, Weinbach, Becker, Sparr, Gresser, and most of all Trimbach (whose “Cuvée Frédéric Émile” bottling is the very essence of fermented bedrock).

Outside Europe, the prime sources for riesling are New Zealand (look for Pegasus Bay or Felton Road) and, surprisingly, Australia, where the massive, slick reds on which the country built its reputation are put away in favor of bone-dry rieslings with shocking levels of acidity. Availability is spotty here in the States, but Grosset is one of the can’t-miss stars.

And please, stick to drinking the stuff. Leave rock (in its solid form) to the professionals…whether geologists or lead guitarists.

(First published in stuff@night, 2008.)