Ordering a bottle of apple-tasting Riesling can be a fraught experience when you have to pronounce a wine that has been called one of "the world's most misunderstood, and mispronounced, grape variety" (see JancisRobinson.com). Do you say 'reece-ling', 'rice-ling', 'roo-sling', 'rise-ling' or even 'reeze-leng'?
It's the tricky 'ie' that makes this German grape variety, and its wines, hard to fathom for English speakers. Just consider for a moment the range of ways that 'ie' is pronounced in this list of words:
- view
- lieutenant
- fries
- piece
- niece
- wierd
We have an 'oo' in 'view' (like Typhoo tea) and and a short 'eh' in 'lieutenant' - unless you say it the American way and it becomes 'oo' again. Order some 'fries' and the 'ie' sounds like an 'i', while 'piece' and 'niece' are a long 'ee' while 'wierd' is just, well, odd.
So how would the Germans pronounce it? Listen here.
What you'll notice is that when there are two consecutive vowels (like 'ie') then the German way is to stress the second one - so in Riesling it is the 'e' becoming 'reece-ling' with a heavily rolled 'r' at the beginning.
But hang on, was it always said that way?
Riesling's historical roots go back to the fifteenth century in the city of Worms, Germany (or what was then part of the Frankish Empire) where it is first mentioned as "Rüssling". The double dots over the 'u' (an umlaut) means that you have to go for it when saying it out loud - so it becomes 'roose-ling'. And then there's a map from Alsace of 1348 that shows it as 'Russelinge' and a document from a hundred years later that spells it 'Rissling'.
So just how do you say 'Riesling'? Well for now let's stick to 'reece-ling' and wait to see how it all pans out over the next couple of hundred years.
Try these Rieslings reviewed on wineuncorked.co.uk:
Aldi Exquisite Clare Valley Riesling 2018
