A Mosel Masterpiece, Etna Rising and Thistledown’s Grenache Stylings: Weekly Tasting Report (Aug 9-15)

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott’s positive impressions of the 2022 vintage in the Mosel region of Germany were fully confirmed when he returned last week for the second of his three trips there. Unusually, this region, which majors in a handful of different wine styles, shines brightly in two of them simultaneously.

Let’s start with riesling Kabinett, which was already a well-established style of the Mosel at the beginning of the 1980s. Back then, this light-bodied, aromatic and crisp off-dry style was ideally suited to the very cool climate of the region.

The challenge in making Mosel Kabinett wines was, and remains, to balance a vibrant acidity with just enough unfermented grape sweetness to accentuate the aromas and to create an exciting tension. You should feel that hint of sweetness on the front palate, but the finish should come over as dry.

When climate change arrived, ripeness levels moved up and acidity levels moved down, making it more difficult to keep the lightness and brightness this style demands. The new theory of Mosel Kabinett says that the style works best in vintages with high analytical acidity levels, such as 2021.

That makes the perfect Julian Haart Riesling Mosel Ohligsberg Kabinett (White Label) 2022 all the more astonishing. This masterpiece marries incredible concentration with all the light-footedness and brilliance that this category is capable of under ideal conditions. And all this in spite of an acidity content that is analytically moderate. However, it feels dangerously fresh. This is because the pH levels – the best measure of the intensity of acidity – are low in the 2022 vintage, meaning that the acidity feels intense.

Then there is Julian Haart’s fanatical commitment to quality. “I don’t care how much work it is or what it costs, if I can do something that will improve the quality, then I will always do it,” he told Stuart.

The only problem with this wine is the tiny yield that the ancient vines in this small plot of vineyard give – just a few hundred bottles. However, study the notes below and you will find there are many other excellent Mosel Kabinetts.

For example, the famous Maximin Grünhaus (con Schubert) winery in the Ruwer subregion of the Mosel made seven different Kabinetts in 2022. The Maximin Grünhaus (von Schubert) Riesling Mosel Abtsberg Kabinett 2022 is a great example, and it shouldn’t be very difficult to find.

The other category with many high points is dry riesling, which is much newer, the whole category having been developed from scratch over the last decades. Many of the best of these wines are designated as GGs, but some of the best are outsiders like the Selbach-Oster Riesling Mosel Zeltinger Schlossberg Bömer 2022, which is breathtakingly fresh and has enormous salty concentration with an extremely long, powerful and focused finish. This is another limited production wine, but there are many other excellent examples that will be easier to find.

“The dry rieslings of the Mosel have developed incredibly over the last years, and this is now where the focus lies,“ said Johannes Selbach, the owner of Selbach-Oster, who added that his winery would nevertheless continue to make riesling Spatlese and Auslese – the sweet and juicy styles which were the region’s main strength back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Although 2022 was not a special vintage for riesling Spatlese and Auslese, Selbach made one of the few really extraordinary off-dry wines of the vintage with his Selbach-Oster Riesling Mosel Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Spätlese Feinherb Ur Alte Reben 2022, which is simultaneously an umami bomb and a slate bomb with mind-blowing concentration. It comes from vines over 100 year old, but as with many other great 2022s, the yield was very low.

A WINE FLOW FROM ETNA

In Italy, James is gearing up for a trip to Etna later in the summer to check out a few producers. One who is high on his list is Frank Cornelissen. James met the Belgian once a long time ago and he was already impressed with his dedication in making the volcanic viticultural area one of the best in the world. He is a big fan of all of Cornelissen’s single-vineyard wines, which come from various lava flows on the slopes of the volcano. Check out the ratings for Cornelissen’s new releases, from the 2020 vintage, in this report.

There are also some equally compelling Etna wines from the Benanti family in this report. The Benanti brothers, Salvino and Antonio, are making some of the most polished and transparent wines from the region, both reds and whites. Some outstanding new releases from Girolamo Russo are also in this week’s list. And you also may not have heard of a few Etna produces in this report making excellent wines, including Biondi, Palmento Costanzo and Antichi Vinai.

Meanwhile, James came across a new wine from Bolgheri’s Orma, a pure cabernet franc called Aola di Orma. He was impressed with the brightness and balance to this wine and its precise varietal character with refined structure. It’s more polished than the muscular Bordeaux blend named after the estate, simply called Orma.

And please take notice of the wines from Rosset, which are made in the alpine region of Valle d'Aosta. Their freshness and energy are assured by the high-altitude vineyards of the estate.

Senior Editor Zekun Shuai was with James in our Tuscany office, where he came across a few wines and producers that stood out in the past week’s tastings. Special mention, he said, goes to Poderi Boscarelli, which once again triumphed with their minerally austere Vino Nobile di Montepulciano wines from 2019.

2019 is an impressive play from Boscarelli because of how well the wines show at a very early stage. Particularly striking are the Vino Nobile Riserva bottling and il Nocio, a pure sangiovese from the three-hectare vineyard Vigna il Nocio, which lies at an altitude ranging from 280 to 350 meters. Boscarelli’s 2019 vintage stands out mostly for the tannin quality, which is abundant yet silty, with great purity of fruit and precision. While il Nocio seems to be a little tarrier and more vertical than the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano bottlings, there is a mineral consensus in almost every one of Boscarelli’s 2019 wines. The overall quality of Boscarelli is solid proof of why this DOCG is one of the most underrated in Tuscany, if not Italy.

Another highlight from Italy was the Foradori Nosiola Vigneti delle Dolomiti Fontanasanta 2021 – a stunning white from the ancient Trentino grape nosiola and biodynamically made. The wine shows an otherworldly nose of stemmy, herbal freshness that reminded Zekun of a fine mezcal, evolving in the glass with its white pepper funk and salted lemons. The palate is full and substantial yet super zingy and fresh, with the drinkability of some of the most fun yet serious reds we know. And given its unbeatable price, stocking up is recommended.

REWRITING THE GRENACHE STORY

In Australia, Senior Editor Ned Goodwin MW continued to taste the wines of Thistledown, a leading producer of grenache in McLaren Vale alongside Yangarra, S.C. Pannell, Bondar, Aphelion and Bekkers, whose syncopation of propitious sites and extremely old bush vines make for irrefutable regional styling. McLaren Vale grenache is at the forefront of the world’s more exciting wine narratives. It could be called a renaissance but it is more akin to an awakening as growers draw on a resource once perceived, at least by the myopic, as "a weed."

Thistledown held a formative tasting of each vintage produced to date of its top cuvees, Sands of Time and This Charming Man, from 2018 to 2022. In essence, Sands of Time is from a prized vineyard in Blewitt Springs on pure Maslin sand, dappled with ironstone and underlain by clay. The source is southeast facing. The octogenarian brush vines are all dry-grown. Conversely, This Charming Man is sourced from the Smart Vineyard in Clarendon, another unofficial subregion of the Vale that was decimated by the Vine Pull Scheme. Here the soils are heavier brown to red loams smattered with quartz and ironstone. Centurion bush vines are abundant, although Thistledown opts to source from somewhat younger vines in the middle of the site due to better ventilation and the dappled light that results, promoting gradual rather than expedient ripening.

In general, Sands of Time boasts a succulent pinoté, pixelated freshness and a gritty succulence, although in recent cooler vintages, the mellifluous 2021 and more structured 2022, a vintage that winemaker Giles Cooke MW calls "the tightening of the screw," Charming Man is on the ascendency. It boasts a ferrous burl and exotic perfumes – a confluence somewhere between the tannic spindle of Barbaresco and the aromatic levity of Chambolle.

– Stuart Pigott, James Suckling, Zekun Shuai and Ned Goodwin MW contributed reporting.

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by James Suckling and the other tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon. Some will be included in upcoming tasting reports.

Note: You can sort the wines below by country, vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.