How to Tell if Riesling Is Dry or Sweet, According to Wine Pros

“I don’t like Riesling, it’s too sweet” is a phrase that bedevils wine professionals everywhere. Riesling, the grape behind some of the world’s most alluring white wines, can produce high-acid, bone-dry wines just as easily as it can make fruity wines with residual sugar (in fact, in Germany, the home of Riesling, dry wines are actually more popular these days). Both styles can be delicious, but knowing how to tell whether a wine is sweet or dry from its label can be complicated. 

“With Riesling, sweetness is the elephant in the room that wine professionals don’t want to talk about,” says David Weitzenhoffer, founder of Community Wines & Spirits in New York City. “We so badly want people to love Riesling but it’s even difficult for us to give consumers hard and fast rules that make it easy to tell the styles apart.”

Riesling is an aromatic grape native to Germany and is the most widely planted grape there. High-acid by nature, it particularly thrives in cooler climates. Riesling, dry or sweet, often has flavors of pear and green apple, stone fruits like peach and apricot, and lemony citrus notes, too.

Its thin skins make it susceptible to botrytis (a mold that affects grape clusters, which when beneficial often is referred to as “noble rot”), which can yield sweet, luscious wines with dried fruit and bitter honey notes. When aged, Riesling can take on a honeyed or nutty qualities, the fruit often shifting more towards citrus marmalade; sometimes it also takes on kerosine-like aromatic notes. 

Though there are excellent Rieslings to be had from Austria, Australia, France’s Alsace region, and, more recently, New York’s Finger Lakes Region, Germany is Riesling’s homeland. German Rieslings run the gamut from quite sweet to lightly off-dry to very, very dry. 

As a consumer, buying or ordering Riesling can be confusing, as the labelling isn’t standardized across all producers or all regions. In the U.S, you’ll often find the word “dry” printed on the label, but in other places it’s often less clear. In Germany there is an entire system of labeling terms that define Riesling quality and sweetness. 

It can be frustrating to open up a bottle you just picked up at the wine shop, expecting a dry wine with tons of acid and brightness, to find you’ve landed on an off-dry Riesling that’s instead rich with honeyed sweetness (or vice-versa). To avoid Riesling-related disappointments, here’s everything you need to know to tell if a Riesling is dry, according to wine professionals. 

Check the alcohol percentage 

When seeking out dry Riesling, look for higher alcohol wines. “Alcohol and sugar can have an inverse relationship with each other,” says Julia Schwartz, wine director at Claud in New York.
“The higher the alcohol, the less remaining sugar in a wine and vice versa. If the wine has a low alcohol level (about 9% and below), you are more likely to encounter residual sugar.” 

When wine is made, yeasts eat the natural sugars in grape juice, converting them into alcohol and carbon dioxide. If the fermentation stops before all the sugars are converted to alcohol, then there will be what’s called “residual sugar” in the finished wine, i.e. sweetness. By law, wines sold in the U.S. must show the alcohol by volume of the wine on the label (either on the front or back of the bottle). Rieslings can range wildly from sweet, late-harvest bottlings that clock in around 5% ABV to bone-dry wines that can reach 14% ABV. 

Also, when in the season the grapes were harvested can also impact the sweetness of a wine and the amount of alcohol present in the bottle. The longer grapes ripen, the more sugar they will accumulate. “Riesling grapes used for sweet styles of wine are harvested far later [in the growing season] than those destined to be dry, so there will be an abundance of sugar that remains in the wine after a slow, incomplete fermentation,” says Ellis Srubas-Giammanco, wine director at Penny in New York City. “The intricate dance between sugar, acidity and alcohol that results in such a spectrum of dry [and sweet] wines is what makes Riesling such a fascinating grape variety,” he adds. 

Look for ‘trocken’

Germany’s intricate Riesling labeling system is based primarily on the ripeness of the grapes at harvest. The terminology is complex, but the simple, catch-all term that indicates that a wine is dry is trocken. 

“With German rieslings, the term that will most reliably indicate a dry wine is trocken (the German word for ‘dry’), as it is a legally defined term dictating a maximum number of grams per liter of residual sugar in a wine,” says Srubas-Giammanco. “A trocken riesling can still contain up to a few grams of sugar, but that’s barely perceptible against the variety’s very high natural acidity.” (The upper limit is 9 grams per liter, which is actually less than the 12 g/l limit for brut, or dry, Champagnes.)

(Also, the term feinherb is not legally defined like trocken, but is often used when labelling wines that land in the zone between completely dry and very slightly sweet.)

Is it ‘GG’?

To further distinguish things (or complicate them, depending on how you look at it), Germany also has an association of 202 top producers, the Verbrand Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (VDP), that uses its own classification system and winemaking regulations. 

For members of the VDP, the term Grosses Gewächs is used to indicate dry wines made from grapes grown on a single vineyard — wines largely considered the best dry wines in Germany. These wines will be labelled on the neck of the bottle with the embossed letters GG and a grape bunch. 

Try Riesling from countries and regions that start with the letter A 

Some of the best-known dry Rieslings are made from regions and countries that start with the letter A: Austria, Australia, and Alsace (a region in northern France). While this isn’t a hard and fast rule, dry Riesling is the more common style in these locations. 

“Classically, Austria has been an important region for dry Riesling,” says Nikita Malhotra, wine director and partner at Smithereens in New York. Notable regions within Austria for dry Riesling include Wacahu, Kamptal, and Kremstal, all of which yield richer-style wines with peachy notes. 

(In the U.S., the vast majority of affordable Riesling tends to be sweet—Washington’s Chateau Ste. Michelle is the single largest Riesling producer in the country by a long shot, and its basic bottling is off-dry—but top Rieslings from cooler climates like New York’s Finger Lakes Region the Pacific Northwest are often dry. “I think Oregon is making some great examples of Riesling, too,” says Malhotra.)

For many years, almost all Australian Rieslings were made in a dry style. Today there are more semi- or off-dry wines, but the label almost always designates which style the wine is. Overall, they are marked by a unique combination of citrus characteristics (primary lime, lemon and grapefruit) and often a stony minerality on the finish. The best can be aged successfully and over time will take on notes of honey and toast. 

Alsace Rieslings tend to be richer in style, but still largely dry or with very faint traces of residual sugar. Their flavors lean more towards orchard fruits than intense citrus notes, but they still feature Riesling’s bright, palate-whetting acidity. They’re substantial enough to go well with a roast chicken or classic Alsace choucroute, and the best, as with those of other regions, definitely repay time spent aging in a cellar.