Riesling lovers have much to smile about these days. The once-lackluster varietal is now having a renaissance of sorts and shining brighter than ever before.

The grape has had an illustrious career dating to the 1400s, but a flood of poorly made, cheap and sweet versions slammed North America in the 1960s and continued through the 1990s, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth for true Riesling aficionados.

"Good Riesling has always been around, but for a long time, it was hard to find it on shelves outside of specialty shops," says Randall Grahm, the creator of Bonny Doon Vineyards in northern California. Grahm's new endeavor, Pacific Rim Winemakers, is a $5.7 million, nearly all-Riesling winery in East Richland near Red Mountain. The winery will produce some 300,000 cases of Riesling in the next five years.

Chateau Ste. Michelle winery has been a champion of Riesling for more than 40 years, starting to produce it when other wineries were banking on Chardonnay as the preferred white wine. The winery produces seven styles of Riesling to showcase the different flavor profiles - from dessert sweet to off-dry to bone-dry. They produce more than 800,000 cases of Riesling annually. In 1999, renowned German winemaker Ernst Loosen partnered with Ste. Michelle to produce Eroica, a premium Riesling that has been a best seller ever since.

"Riesling has definitely made a comeback, and I firmly believe that it's up to us, the producers, to continually work for top quality so that its reputation does not get ruined again," Loosen says.

A few years ago, Long Shadows Vintners, based in Walla Walla, partnered with Armin Diel, the German proprietor of the renowned Schlossgut Diel, to create Poet's Leap, an off-dry Riesling with spicy aromatics and a clean, crisp finish.

Riesling has a powerful and distinctive floral and applelike aroma that frequently mixes in mineral elements from its vineyard source - it can literally taste like the ground it is grown in. Flavors often associated with Riesling include stone fruits (peaches, apricots), honey and flowers. Northwest Rieslings can have citrus, ripe pear, pineapple and mango flavors with a bit of minerality and slate. It is also low in alcohol.

The best Rieslings have a viscous quality, a lingering fleshy characteristic that coats the tongue and wraps around food as though it was part of the original ingredients. The old-world style has some petroleum aromas, which sounds unappealing but actually works in the wine, although it is an acquired aroma. The wine can be intense but clean and crisp, with lots of bracing acidity that startles the senses and helps make it a wine no food would turn down. These wines can also age in the cellar for decades.

Northwest Rieslings are produced in a more new-world style, although Grahm blends some German Riesling into his Pacific Rim to get a hint of old-world flavors. These Rieslings often display more citrus and stone fruit flavors. Many are easy-drinking, fruity wines, but can reach to the heights of liquid nectar with sun-baked stone flavors.

Hugh Johnson, a respected British wine writer, best described Riesling as pure wine, innocent of oak, that precisely reflects its origin, in a range from flowery and feather-light, to tense, dry and mineral-laden, to unctuous and creamy, to piercing, liquorlike celestial marmalade.

Vintners have many theories as to why the once-heralded grape lost its audience. Some think the cheap imports, such as Blue Nun and cloying, sweet Liebfraumilch, had little character or complexity and were only suitable for washing down potato salad. Some winemakers were growing Riesling grapes in areas that did not have the necessary cool climate, and the result was thin, almost bitter wines that had the acidity for food, but didn't taste good alone.