We love Riesling from the Mosel valley in Germany, and one of the reasons for this is that you can often find it in an array of styles- from dry to sweet and everything in between.
One form of Riesling we often see less of is when it is made with skin contact, producing a richly colored orange wine. The skin contact often adds ample new flavors and complexities that you would otherwise not get with light pressing. Sybille Kuntz Organic Riesling was one such wine, and this one certainly packed a punch!
Dry Skin Contact Riesling from Mosel
This skin contact Riesling was medium orange in color with medium aromas of lime, yellow apple, grapefruit, petrol, peach skin, orange, sage, thyme, white blossom, and beeswax.
On the palate it was dry with medium(+) acidity and body, medium alcohol and flavor intensity, and a long finish. We had notes of lemon, lime, yellow apple, grapefruit, peach, white blossom, beeswax, white flower, and a slight phenolic texture as well.
One item of note with this particular bottle was that it had an incredible amount of fine sediment that even after straining into a decanter, still found its way into our glass. Part of this may just be my lack of practice with bottles of this high sediment count, but this one was easily redistributed with any minor movement of the decanter- so be careful on that end.
Orange Riesling Food Pairing – Thai Curry
We paired this skin contact Riesling with one of our favorite dishes- spicy red Thai curry with rockfish.
An aromatic wine is always a good choice for this dish because the flavors of the curry and the heat always work out well. While this wine had no real residual sugar to help with the heat balance, the lightly floral characteristics of the wine shined with the aromatics. Beyond that, many of the other flavors held up to make this one a simple but delicious pairing all around without any major flavor changes.
Score: 3.5 / 5
We’d buy a glass of this one and a bottle with the right pairing.
As always, orange wines can be a bit intense for us, and while this one does not have any overt funkiness or strong flavors due to the skin contact (more some of the waxy, phenolic notes), it still trended that direction all the same. We always would be up for a glass of this one, and a bottle with the right food pairing. Although, we would have to do a better job decanting it next time as the sediment is real here!
Sybille Kuntz is located at Moselstraße 25, 54470 in Lieser, Germany. We received this bottle in our Picked by Wine.com subscription and enjoyed it in 2024.
