Diversity is a hallmark of Washington's revitalized riesling

In its heart, the wine industry is a fashion industry, and it's been in the midst of a major change in popular styles. On the white-wine side, riesling has come back from the boneyard and rather suddenly taken center stage, especially here.

It's no exaggeration to say that the grape's renaissance began with the announcement, a decade ago, that Chateau Ste. Michelle and Germany's Ernst Loosen would collaborate to craft the best possible riesling from Columbia Valley vineyards. That wine, named Eroica, has fulfilled its promise, revitalizing the stature of Washington's riesling grape.

A few weeks ago, Loosen and Ste. Michelle head winemaker Bob Bertheau invited me to join them and two others from the winemaking team in a component tasting for the 2008 Eroica. In a component tasting, lots of wines that have been separately vinified are evaluated for their potential as components in the finished wine.

For Eroica, 54 separate tanks were sampled. Based on the previous nine vintages, many of these were preselected, what Bertheau calls "the year-in-and-year-out, cream-rising-to-the-top candidates."

Cream or no cream, no two vintages of Eroica have been identically blended. "There's always some wild card that comes out of nowhere," Loosen explains. In 2008, that wild card was the weather.

I joined the winemakers after the first cut. The next task was to taste through the remaining candidates and vote "in" or "out." Starting with about 220,000 gallons of juice, this would cut it down to about 70,000 — enough for 27,000 cases of 2008 Eroica.

On a blustery winter morning, five of us sat each with eight glasses filled from eight bottles of recently fermented riesling. The sniffing and snarfling began, and after a few minutes of silence, a wine-by-wine discussion ensued. Some quick impressions of style: "classic nose," "too much primary fruit for Eroica," "sweaty, canned peach" . . . Hey, wait a minute! I liked that one. Waddya mean sweaty?!

The goal, Loosen explained, is to create a riesling with European character. "For me," he said, "it's not the most important thing to have the most primary fruit. If a wine shows everything now, what will it show in 12 months? I like sometimes to have some reductive wine in the plan, which gives it ageability. On its own, maybe not so attractive. But this flint stone, reductive aroma sometimes gives beautiful ageability."

So, setting out in search of flint stone (where's Fred when you need him?) I retuned my palate. We worked our way through 29 wines in all.

I'm used to evaluating finished wines, not tank samples. At this earlier stage, the best stand-alone wines might not be the best blenders. You have to look for characteristics in each sample that can create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Even so, I came away impressed by the range of flavors expressed in these unfinished wines, which came from almost every corner of Washington. I thought at least eight or 10 could have been released unblended as examples of excellent Washington riesling. A few single-vineyard rieslings are being made here, but this was the most striking collection I have ever seen reflecting the stylistic complexity available.

We finished up with a tasting of Eroica from 2001, 2004 and 2007 (the current vintage) and it answered the big question: How does Eroica age?

Beautifully!

Paul Gregutt is the author of "Washington Wines & Wineries — the Essential Guide." Contact him at paulgwine@me.com.