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A new wine on the way...from Scotland
There has been a lot of interest in wine tasting and, in particular, the production of English wines on hotcatUK over the past six months, and this article in yesterday’s Sunday times caught my eye: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7017971.ece
The windswept hills of Scotland aren’t the first thing which spring to mind when you think about wine making, but the first Scottish commercially-produced Riesling will go into production later this year. Owner and chef of the Ardeonaig Hotel in Perthshire, Pete Gottgens planted Bacchus and Madeleine Angevine vines which have been maturing for four years and this year will harvest the crop for the first time to make a white Riesling.
This might seem an over-optimistic project, but changes in the global temperature mean that warmer summers are less of a pipe dream nowadays and if warm weather hits Scotland, Gottgens is hopeful of making a decent wine.
This isn’t without precedent; three years ago, executives from champagne giant Louis Roederer began to explore the possibilities of buying up land in Kent and Sussex to expand into the English sparkling wine market. The land is cheaper to purchase, the soil and temperature (thanks to the rise in global temperatures) of the southern counties largely match the conditions in Champagne. Wine coming out of England is no longer regarded with suspicion. However, Scotland being higher up and less prone to higher temperatures, will it be possible to produce a drinkable Riesling? I’ll be interested to see what the outcome of Pete Gottgen’s harvest is and hope it’s a successful one.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh McGivern on -
This is one wine I will gladly queue up to taste. If Washington State can produce a fantastic Riesling then why not Scotland. ( You would think I was a patriotic Scotsman................. Yes!!! I am)
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Permalink Reply by Sonya Lipczynska on -
Yes, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the progress of this one and hope that he can prove all the naysayers wrong.
Hugh McGivern said:This is one wine I will gladly queue up to taste. If Washington State can produce a fantastic Riesling then why not Scotland. ( You would think I was a patriotic Scotsman................. Yes!!! I am)
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Permalink Reply by Jane Carlton Smith on -
Experts may contradict me, but I have never heard of a Riesling made from anything other than the Riesling grape, of which there are several variants. There also used to be 'Laski Riesling' of which the less said the better, and I don't know what that was made from.
Bacchus wines made in the UK don't taste like Riesling and Madeline Angevine is not the most characterful of grapes in my view. Mr Gottgens sound like he may have German ancestry and should know of the proud history of the Riesling grape in Germany - it is one of the world's finest grapes according to Jancis Robinson. My advice would be to call the wine what it actually is, i.e. Bacchus, or a white blend, rather than hoping to persuade guests to buy what is most defnitely not a Riesling, and not even a Riesling-style for those who know their wines.
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