Amanda Danielson, December 2020
Food and Wine magazine included the 2017 Dry Riesling from Left Foot Charley as one of seventeen examples of the variety from around the world that express the versatility and transparency of this noble grape.
This wine is perceptibly dry laying waste to the all-too-common assumption that Riesling is a sweet wine. That said, the 2017 Dry Riesling is not without residual sugar (6.7 g/L), which contributes to viscosity, texture, and the ability to age. Bryan deftly strung a tightwire between that sugar and the razor-sharp acidity creating tension between those two structural elements. In a word: balance.
Young, dry Riesling is transparent in both appearance and in its ability to express the place and time it came from. Bryan treated each of the six vineyards blended in this wine as distinctive notes, building chords, and ultimately a composition that rings with the soul of Old Mission Peninsula as it was in 2017.
Whether lauded by publications of prestige or simply a tasting room favorite, the 2017 Dry Riesling from Left Foot Charley is a window into the unique glacial terroir of Old Mission Peninsula while being as at home on the dinner table as it is on the beaches of the Great Lakes that make great wine possible at the edge of viticultural viability.