Fortune Favors the Bold Wine Selection: Rudi Wiest Riesling

So last night I went all out on dinner.  There's this Thai roast chicken recipe I'd been wanting to do for a while, but it's a little time intensive.  I had some time freed up so I decided to get to it.  Along with that I made a stir-fry shrimp and baby bok choy in a citrus soy sauce and coconut rice.  The food was a lot of work, but the hard part was figuring out a good wine pairing with the spicy citrusy dishes.

The most obvious choice for the meal would be some kind of white.  However, we're pretty much red wine drinkers and our white selection is rather limited.  We had a few whites that would work, but they'd all already been reviewed.  We also had some desert wines chilled and ready, but this wasn't desert yet.  Fortunately, Pris is an excellent selector of wines. 

Pris decided on a Rudi Wiest Riesling of an unknown vintage.  It seemed a bold choice at first, but it worked flawlessly with the meal.  This was a slightly dry and incredibly refreshing Riesling, not like a number of the sweeter ones on the market. The Rudi Wiest had a soft citrus nose and loads of citrus on the palate.  There was a nice mellow sweetness, but the acidity kept it from being overbearing.  This was an excellent crisp and refreshing wine that went great with the Asian dishes.

The citrus in the wine was a fantastic compliment to the heavy citrus and spice in the dishes.  In fact, a small tag that was still on the bottle noted that is paired well with shellfish and spicy dishes.  This was quite fortunate considering that dinner was loaded with lime, Thai peppers, and shrimp.

The Rudi Wiest Riesling came from a little store called WineStyles in McAllen that's no longer around.  We got the bottle in a basket that we won in a raffle years ago.  WineStyles was a great little store for buying wine in that it was very user friendly.  All bottles were labeled and categorized by flavor/type rather than varietal and region.  However, they are gone in the Valley, but you may run into them elsewhere.  For more information on the Rudi Wiest wines you can visit: http://www.rudiwiest.com/index.html