Navarro's first Riesling was produced in 1979; most California Rieslings at the time were semisweet and we followed that model until 1991 when we started drying up Navarro's Anderson Valley Riesling. Over the next decade, residual sugars in our Rieslings slowly declined from about 2.0% to about 0.65%, a level which most in the wine industry then considered dry. Our interest in dry Riesling piqued around 2013 as a new cadre of German winemakers began specializing in trocken Rieslings. Consequently, the 2014 vintage at Navarro brought a further reduction in Riesling's residual grape sugars to about 0.45%; we liked the tartness of the wine, so in this vintage we fermented the wine even drier. We harvested the 2015 Riesling a little less ripe than prior vintages and as the wine aged, we enjoyed the freshness resulting from increased acidity, so we harvested this 2017 at about the same level of ripeness. In a series of four tastings, a cuvée was selected from two out of four Riesling lots with the balance used for our 2017 Edelzwicker bottling.

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