Melodious Riesling - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Wine of the Week

Melodious Riesling

by Tara Q. Thomas • June 6, 2022

The Grillenpartz vineyard (Courtesy of Stadt Krems)

This 550-year-old winery has been owned by the city of Krems since 1452, and all 106 acres of its vineyards fall within the city limits. It’s been run since 2003 by Fritz Miesbauer, who’d first made a name for himself by turning around Freie Weingärtner Wachau (now Domäne Wachau). He’s done the same at Stadt Krems, renovating the winery as well as its terraced vineyards. This wine comes from one of the winery’s most esteemed parcels in a vineyard called Grillenpartz, or ‘cricket party,’ an allusion, apparently, to its popularity with heat- and sun-seeking crickets. A south-facing hillside of gneiss, mica-schist and calcareous stone close to the border with Wachau, it’s classified as an Erste Lage, the local equivalent of premier cru. It grew a wine in 2020 that’s both delicate and substantial, with sweet pear flavors bolstered by herbal spice and a mouthwatering sense of salty minerality that lasts, urging another sip. It all comes together in a melodious whole, welcoming now but well worth aging in the cellar for a few years to see what else is to come.

96

Stadt Krems 2020 Kremstal Ried Grillenpartz Riesling

$45

Where To Buy

Every week, our editors highlight a wine that intrigued them in our blind panel tastings, expanding on their tasting note in this space. These are entirely editorial choices; there are no paid placements. Subscribers can also access the original tasting note by searching h ere.

Tara Q. Thomas

is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.

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David Paradela
Associate Editor

David joined Wine & Spirits in 2021 after immersing himself in the world of wine at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally from Boston, he graduated from Boston University with a degree in English and completed a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2021. Prior to working at the magazine, he served as an editor and staff writer for the music blog Sound of Boston and worked in scientific publishing. Aside from wine, he loves basketball, arguing about Taylor Swift’s best album, and everything Greta Gerwig touches.

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Tastings Editor

Corey Warren moved to New York in 2015—fifteen years too late to join The Strokes—after earning a degree at Cornell in Comparative Literature. He started polishing glasses at Betony and threw himself into the restaurant world. Later, while a captain at Aquavit, he began working part time in the Wine & Spirits tasting department. Now, in addition to running tastings, he serves as critic for the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa. Corey likes almost anything bubbly, from Miller High Life, the Champagne of beers, to Champagne, the Champagne of Champagne, but he’ll drink anything once, and loves finding unique wines.

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Since Tara Q. Thomas joined Wine & Spirits in 1997, she’s traveled the wine world from Argentina to Australia. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, with more than 20 years of experience in the food and wine world, Tara puts her culinary knowledge to use as W&S’s resident food critic, and is the critic for the wines of Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe, Argentina, and the Mediterranean. She’s particularly enthusiastic about the wines of Greece, where she once lived and cooked. Outside of W&S, Tara has authored two books, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wine Basics and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Wine; contributed to the Oxford Companion to Cheese as well as Oxford’s forthcoming volume on spirits; and writes a wine column for Culture: The Word on Cheese.

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After graduating with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Patricio Tapia attended Bordeaux University in France, where he studied for a diploma in wine tasting and winemaking. Since then, he has visited wine regions around the world and authored several books, including his annual Descorchados, a Chilean wine guide; The Wines of Colchagua Valley; TodoVino and Wines for Great Occasions. Tapia is also the South American correspondent for The Oxford Companion to Wine, The World Atlas of Wine and Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book. For the past three years, he’s been a host on the El Gourmet channel in South America. At Wine & Spirits, Tapia is the critic for the wines of Argentina, Chile and Spain, and regularly contributes articles on these regions.