Riesling is tattooed down my right calf. Well, to be more accurate, it says iesling. The R has rubbed off in the past 24 hours, so clearly it isn’t permanent. Which will please my mother.
I hadn’t even had a drink when I agreed to get Riesling stamped on my leg on Saturday night by a virtual stranger. His name is Paul Greico. And he’s the bearded force behind the ‘Summer of Riesling’ concept that is now going global.
It all started in his New York wine bar, Terroir, in 2008. “I thought if I’m ever going to get my customers to drink Riesling, I can’t give them a choice so my wine list started out with 30 Rieslings and nothing else. So, you were either going to drink Riesling or walk out the door and we did have people walking out the door.”
As both a Riesling and a Tottenham Hotspurs fan, Greico appears to like the unlikely. “It’s my challenge to fight the good fight for the underdog,” he says.
Greico is clearly passionate about this grape variety, and apologises that his language might get a little colourful as he drinks more Riesling and becomes more animated: “After 7 o’clock I swear a lot,” he warns.
In the US, the Summer of Riesling concept has spread widely with 220 restaurants around the US participating in summer 2011. They each poured three Rieslings during the 94 days of summer.
Now it has moved to New Zealand and Australia but there is no specific aim and is anti-marketing. “This is a sommelier driven gig. It is not professional. This is a groundswell of activity and wherever it goes it fucking goes.”[Time check – 9.30pm]
“We are trying to take it to Canada and the EU.”
The International Riesling Scale has been introduced for producers to indicate how dry or sweet their product is, but sweetness remains one of the stumbling blocks for consumers.
“We have to talk about the S word when we talk about Riesling, and it scares the crap out of people.”
Instead, in the words of Beavis and Butthead, says Greico, we should be talking about whether Riesling is cool or it sucks.
It better be cool or I’ve gone and got a really lame tattoo on my calf. Now that would suck.
