The Blue Nun Winemaker’s Passion Riesling 2014 is sourced from Qualitätswein (translate to quality wine, the top German quality category) vineyards in the Rheinhessen region of Germany. The Blue Nun brand started in 1923 with the 1921 vintage. It was created to simplify German wine for wine drinkers outside of Germany who couldn’t read the language on the label and were not familiar with German wineries. Blue Nun was so successful that in 1985, 1,250,000 cases were sold in the US with another 750,000 cases sold worldwide. Today, it is still the #1 exported wine from Germany. Blue Nun is cold fermented (cold fermentation needs less sulfites and produces a bright, fruity White wine), is a medium sweet wine and the alcohol content is a low 10.5%.
The color is a clear, shiny, pale wheat yellow. The nose is a mix of peach and pear, along with a little grapefruit, pineapple and lemon. This is a sweet wine, but it is nectar sweet, more like biting into a ripe peach. The flavors are balanced, it starts with peach, pear, unsweetened pineapple and sugared lemon. The acidity gives the flavors some length and has enough zip to make the Blue Nun a food wine. The finish starts off strong and slowly fades away.
The Blue Nun Winemaker’s Passion Riesling 2014 is a very solid and easy to like German Riesling. I normally drink dry Riesling, it has been years since I bought a sweet Riesling, but I’m liking this Blue Nun. I keep pausing my typing to take another sip. The Blue Nun is an excellent family get-together White wine. It’s sweet nature and fruit forward, but balanced flavors are easy to interpret for new wine drinkers. German Riesling from Mosel gets all the wine press, but flavor descriptors like slate, minerality and petrol can be daunting for many wine drinkers, while Blue Nun will speak to wine novices and still keep wine geeks happy.
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