Is Riesling Sweet or Dry? A Winemaker's Answer

It's the first question we hear across the tasting bar, almost every day: is Riesling sweet or dry? The honest answer is both — and neither. Where a Riesling lands is a choice the winemaker makes, not something the grape decides. Let us explain.

Riesling has a reputation, and it isn't always a fair one. A lot of guests grew up on one very sweet bottle and filed the whole grape under "dessert wine." So they're surprised when the Riesling we pour on the terrace above Keuka Lake is dry. The grape didn't change. The decision in the cellar did.

Here's the thing worth holding onto: Riesling is a canvas, not a fixed style. One grape, grown well, can become a crisp dry wine or a richer sweeter one, depending on a single decision the winemaker makes at the tank. That flexibility is exactly why the grape travels so well, and why our Riesling and our neighbor's Riesling can be built so differently.

Let us translate that. Grapes arrive full of natural sugar. In the cellar, yeast eats that sugar and turns it into alcohol — that's fermentation, the heart of making any wine. Leave the yeast to finish its work and it eats nearly all the sugar. What's left is a dry wine. That leftover sugar has a name: residual sugar.

So a winemaker who wants an off-dry or sweet style steps in and stops fermentation early — usually by chilling the tank hard, which puts the yeast to sleep before it finishes. The sugar it didn't eat stays in the bottle. According to Wine Folly, this is why the same grape can be made bone-dry or lusciously sweet: the difference is a call made in the cellar, not a trait baked into the variety.

The label is your friend here, once you know what to look for. Plenty of Finger Lakes bottles carry a small scale on the back, put together by the International Riesling Foundation: a sliding bar running from Dry to Medium Dry to Medium Sweet to Sweet, with a marker showing where that particular wine lands. It was designed for exactly this question, so a shopper isn't guessing.

• "Dry" or "Dry Riesling" on the front — a wine made to finish with little residual sugar.
• "Off-dry" or "semi-dry" — a touch of sugar left in, a middle path.
• The International Riesling Foundation Taste Profile scale on the back label — a sliding bar from dry to sweet.
• No wording at all — that's your cue to ask whoever is pouring. We'll always tell you exactly where a wine sits.

Our vines sit on a slope that drops toward Keuka Lake, and the water works like a fridge with the door cracked open. It keeps the fruit cool and lets the grapes hang late — often into the third week of October. That long, slow ripening is what gives a dry Riesling its structure and lift. The Finger Lakes Wine Alliance calls Riesling the region's signature grape, and cool-climate character is exactly why.

This is where our story shows up in the glass. Sébastien is the sixth generation of a winemaking family from Champagne, and we brought that patient, unhurried way of working to a New York hillside. We don't rush the fruit, and we make our dry Riesling the way we believe the lake wants it made. French roots, Finger Lakes soul. You can read more about how a French winemaker came to make Riesling here, or see the range on our wines page.

The best way to settle the sweet-or-dry question is to taste across the range in one sitting. That's what a seated tasting is for. We'll pour a few Rieslings side by side, tell you where each one sits and why we built it that way, and let you find the one that fits you — no rush, no pressure. Come visit us above the lake and we'll walk you through it.