The exotic life and death cycle of the Chilean Reisling

Unable to resist the urge to pass on your unwanted New Year party wines? Perhaps you should reconsider. Here Andrew Price reveals the full horror of the Chilean Reisling.


AS a licenced exorcist of inferior wines, I felt it my duty to break the evil spell of a bottle which a ‘friend’ brought to my party and cast the devil into my sink, despite the acrid smoke as I flushed it away. To help you mitigate future anti-social compulsions of a similar embarrassing nature, let me help you with the following information.

The Laithwaitian provenance of a boxed Chilean Riesling is actually more interesting than you might imagine. It possesses an exotic life cycle that deserves an anthropological module. Apparently, their mysterious journeys start from the misplaced enthusiasms of second generation expat Germans keen to remember the homeland by starting small vineyards on the slopes of the Andes.

After a choppy crossing to Europe, these queasy Rieslings slip quietly and unseen into mixed wine cases. Just how they do this remains a mystery despite the efforts of many dedicated vintners to witness the transition.

From here they are surreptitiously posted to comfortable internal exile in middle England, where they are ignored for several years. During this time, they like to decay peacefully in hot living room cupboards, quite often peeking through latticed glass or high shelving to form the untouched impression of a well-stocked bar. This is the period when the screw top likes to relinquish whatever airtight veracity it once possessed. Not being a Riddling wine, the small quantity of aromatic integrity it once possessed wholly dissipates. It is now a beverage only drinkable by a rebellious 15 year old.


Since Rieslings need to be thoroughly poisonous before they are finally drunk, a period of restless movement is required. This is known as the cycle of gift mobility. This mutation is aided by the Darwinian imperative of the dark glass, which disguises the internal putrefaction of the liquid, fooling the host that the product is still viable as a present.

Time after time it likes to hop in and out of cars and hang about in direct sunlight. Remarkably, even though the wine is now utterly foul and the label fading, this doesn’t end the passage. New owners continue to garnish its dull visage with thin glittery bags, allowing it to further pounce forth as gift after gift. The oldest known screw-top Riesling was an estimated 16 years old, having been owned by 14 people. Fortunately nobody knew this but the bottle, which thankfully smashed onto a kitchen floor in Hunstanton, propelled by a drunken youth attempting to emulate the strut of a chicken.

Looking finally tired and sickly green, Rieslings now employ their tall sumptuous shape to attract the attention of a confused dancer at a party. This poor soul is invariably male and the very type that subliminally confuses the bottle with the sensuous female form. This seduction phase usually happens in semi-darkness from (as just implied) an already drunk person of diminished faculty.

Those unfortunate enough to ingest this beverage without immediately vomiting are prone to staccato and discordant outbursts often confused with Tourette ticks. The Riesling’s active psychotropic hydrocarbon produces a terrible condition known as Rieslingosis Tremensis, nicknamed ah-ya-feck. This febrile and potentially violent ailment is now thought by histo-biologists to have fuelled the ranting rallies of the entire Third Reich. One may witness this sorry state in any late night city centre, especially at Christmas.

It’s an interesting yet unknown fact that 39% of all hospital admitted alcohol poisonings are caused by the consumptive cycle of dead Chilean Rieslings.

An MP recently launched a public safety bill demanding that all Rieslings be handed back to Germany where the populous are trained from birth to handle this dangerous liquid. Unfortunately, the wine trade then threatened to raise all case charges by 15%. so naturally the sponsoring MP for this legislation was laughed out of the house, meaning the dark and tragic victims of this poison remain unchecked.

A change.org campaign exists to banish all Rieslings from the UK and make it a custodial offence to give them as gifts, but this has been ignored. However there are Riesling help groups if you feel the compulsion to give another one away again. The best we can hope for is that a consortium of Californian Sauvignon Blanc growers are currently funding a public safety amnesty where owners may dispose of all Rieslings in stainless steel vats located in main cities. We understand the liquids will be processed as industrial engine cleaner and the glass as radioactive encasement material.

Copyright 2016 Andy Price


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