Riesling is a native of Germany, where it's believed to have been cultivated for at least 500 and possibly as long as 2,000 years. First documented in 1435, the storage inventory of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen lists the purchase of six barrels of riesslingen from a Rsselsheim vintner. It is considered one of the world's great white wine grapes and produces some of the very best white wines. Today Riesling is Germany's leading grape variety, known for its characteristic "transparency" in flavor, presentation of terroir, and its balance between fruit and mineral flavours.

In Germany, sugar levels at time of harvest is an important consideration in the wine production. As equally important to winegrowers is the balance of acidity between the green tasting malic acid and the more citrus tasting tartaric acid. In cool years, some growers will wait until November to harvest in hopes of having a higher level of ripeness and subsequent tartaric acid. Riesling normally ripens between late September and late November, and late harvest Riesling can be picked as late as January.

Riesling has a powerful and distinctive floral and fruit-like aroma that frequently mixes in mineral elements from its vineyard source and is often described as "racy." Its high natural level of Tartaric acid enables it to balance even high levels of residual sugar.

In Germany, sweet wines are graded in ascending order of sweetness as AUSLESE, BEERENAUSLESE, and TROCKENBEERENAUSLESE.
Riesling wines from Germany cover a vast array of tastes from sweet to off-dry halbtrocken to dry trocken. Late harvest Rieslings can ripen to become very sweet dessert wines of the beerenauslese (BA) and trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) class.

In wine making, the delicate nature of the Riesling grape requires special handling during harvesting to avoid crushing or bruising the skin.
Without this care, the broken skins could leak tannin into the juice, giving a markedly coarse taste and throwing off balance the Riesling's range of flavours and aromas.

Riesling is often put through a process of cold stabilization, where the wine is stored just above its freezing point. The wine is kept at this temperature until much of the tartaric acid has crystallized and precipitated, as in the case of ice wine (in German, Eiswein), water is removed and the resulting wine offers richer layers on the palate. These concentrated wines have more sugar, and more acid to give balance to the flavour.
Unlike Chardonnay,

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