Portal:Wine/Selected article/9
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Riesling is a white grape variety grown historically in Germany (see German wine), Alsace (France), Austria, and northern Italy.
It is a very old grape, first documented in 1435, in which year the storage inventory of the high noble Count John IV. of Katzenelnbogen in Rüsselsheim (a small principality on the Rhine) lists the purchase of riesslingen. The seller is unknown. The modern word Riesling was first documented in 1552 when it was mentioned in Hieronymus Bock's Latin herbal.
DNA fingerprinting by Ferdinand Regner suggests that one parent of Riesling is Gouais Blanc, known to the Germans as Heunisch Weiss, which was brought to Burgundy from Croatia by the Romans. The other parent is a cross between a wild vine and Traminer (Savagnin Blanc). It is presumed that the Riesling was born somewhere in the valley of the Rhine, but with parents from either side of the Adriatic the cross could have happened anywhere on the way.
