Chameleon with potential for greatness

Jancis Robinson once declared riesling to be the world's greatest grape, but few wine drinkers support her assertion and, let's be honest, it is easy to understand why. Riesling doesn't taste great most of the time.

Like pinot gris, riesling does not deliver one reliable taste but ranges from sweet to bone dry with most rieslings in the middle, confusing everybody. Even worse, it reminds many of their early days of wine drinking when low-quality cask white wines dominated.

Unlike pinot gris, which is usually so light that you can drink it without analysing too much, riesling demands you taste, analyse and think about it. Because when riesling is a representative example of where it comes from, it makes a statement about its dryness, acidity or overt flavours.

Little wonder, then, that riesling lags behind the other major grapes planted in New Zealand, slotting into fifth place out of the top 12. That doesn't sound so bad, until planting figures are taken into account. Riesling makes up 4 per cent of New Zealand's national vineyard. And while pinot gris only accounts for 2 per cent, it is forecast to almost catch up with riesling in two years. At that rate riesling will soon be overtaken by pinot gris.

Which is a shame, according to Andrew Greenhough, Nelson's best riesling maker.

He likes riesling because of its varied expression. To Greenhough, riesling is like lots of different wines rolled into one and all based around fruit as opposed to winemaking tricks or additions.

The fact that riesling can range from searingly dry and austere to incredibly sweet is what makes it interesting compared to the mono-taste of pinot gris. But while riesling's thematic variations are more defined than pinot gris', they are also more challenging. Dry rieslings are for those who already like riesling and they polarise wine drinkers into either liking or loathing them in the same way that green olives, anchovies and dark chocolate do.

At one late-night blind tasting with a wine friend we came to a wine I considered to be cloying, cheap and sweet but my friend rated it as a gold medal winner. Despite tasting a second bottle and discussing the wine for about 20 minutes, when we finally revealed its identity we discovered that it was one of this country's lowest-priced, most widely available rieslings and definitely propped up with sweetness rather than inherent riesling flavours. Good and even great rieslings are elusive, they are not widely available and they have not risen to the heady heights of popularity that many predicted they would.

Despite which, this country's riesling has the potential to be as high in quality and distinctive in taste as New Zealand sauvignon blanc, as these local rieslings featured attest to.