Fritz’s Riesling #WineWednesday

During my recent visit to Quadra Island to cover Tastes of April Point 2011 at April Point Resort, I had the opportunity to sample, during our dinner with Ingo Grady, a wonderful Riesling that I thought was completely deserving of a sole feature (particularly because I want to begin to feature specific wines in my Wine Wednesdays series. I have written about a few others before, like the whole gamut of wines from the Apothic red wine to the Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay by Cupcake Winery to the Pinot Noir Rose, Chardonnay and Merlot of Chandra Estate Winery.

I took extensive notes about Fritz’s Riesling (Gunderloch Weingut), but unfortunately I couldn’t find on the website the sugar content (whether it’s dry or not), nor the tasting notes (maybe I didn’t look closely) so you’ll have to rely on my description and the notes from the website. From what I remember (and the writeup we were given), Fritz’s Riesling is 100% Riesling with fruity aromas of apricot, balanced in an off-dry style. I do recall from my notes that this was a spectacularly good wine, chilled to almost zero degrees liberated the sweets. This wine goes really well with very strong flavours on a countervailing approach (e.g. spicy and salty, like tapenade and fish and Moroccan spices paired with a sweet, apricot-y wine).

From the website:

FRITZ´s RIESLING is a light, dynamic very food flexible and modern 100% Riesling wine in a hip packaging and a balanced style.

FRITZ´s RIESLING grows in a very small and special part of Rheinhessen called the „Roter Hang“ meaning the „red hill“. The “Roter Hang” is located between the village of Nackenheim and the village of Nierstein 20 kilometers south of the city of Mainz. The characteristic name of this area is ascribable to its red slate soil. The red color comes from a high portion of minerals in the soil. In addition the vinyards are very close to the river Rhein, they are facing south-east and they have steep slopes. The combination of those four factors: the red slate soil, the closeness to the river, the exponation to the sun and the steepness of the vinyards are the perfect combination to produce a special wine like FRITZ´s RIESLING.

FRITZ´s RIESLING – 100% Joy and 100% Fun

I did get a writeup in my booklet that I am reproducing here:

Gunderloch Fritz’s Riesling illustrates the greatness that can be achieved as a result of combining the Old World with the New. The wine is a collaborative effort between Canada’s Mark Anthony Group and the German winery Gunderloch, who worked together to realize their vision of a premium Riesling that would be made exclusively for the Canadian market.

To be honest, I have no clue of the retail price but I’m going to peg it on the $20 per bottle mark, that’d be my guess.

Disclosure: I enjoyed Fritz’s Riesling during my media trip to Tastes of April Point 2011. I am neither paid, nor have I been provided with a free bottle of wine for sampling, nor am I in any other way compensated for this post. I just wanted to share my impressions of a very robust wine that I enjoyed at an event. As always, I retain full editorial control on anything published on my site.

Be Sociable, Share!