A Prinz Rises in Germany, Plus Heathcote’s Creative Turn: Weekly Tasting Report (Nov 1-7)

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team rated 455 wines from nine countries over the past week, with Senior Editor Stuart Pigott encountering a contrasting week in Germany, as he so often does. The most remarkable wines he tasted were no surprise, because during recent years the Prinz winery has been one of the most consistent top performers in the Rheingau region, which is just around the corner from Stuart’s home.

Not many German winemakers shine as brightly with modern dry riesling as with the vibrant, off-dry style for which Germany was famous when James and Stuart started tasting German wines 40 years ago. Fred Prinz is one of them, and yes, his surname does mean “prince” in German, although he is no aristocrat.

Riesling Kabinett has become a cult category around the world, and one sip of either of Prinz’s 2022 vintage Kabinetts from the Jungfer site of Hallgarten shows why. His Riesling Rheingau Jungfer Kabinett (Auction Wine) 2022 is breathtakingly refreshing, brimming with white peach wild berry and herb aromas. The concentration and wet stone minerality on the barely medium-bodied palate are both off the scale!

Four of Prinz’s dry rieslings from the 2022 vintage wowed Stuart this week and a while back another two did. The star of this lineup is the enormously compact Prinz Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn GG 2022 with its deep mandarin orange and mango chutney character plus sensational mouthfeel and length.

The other exciting wines that Stuart tasted came from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia on the western side of Canada. It’s a cool desert, rather like the Columbia Valley of neighboring Washington across the border in the United States. Bizarrely, the Okanagan offers the only reliably warm and sunny beaches in Canada although it is almost an hour’s flight inland from Vancouver! Okanagan Lake, which snakes its way through the valley, does a lot for the natural beauty of the place, and its waters also influence the climate of many vineyards.

Shane Munn has been the winemaker of Martin’s Lane winery since the inaugural vintage of 2014. Stuart met Munn at a conference on the East Coast of the U.S. earlier this year and was finally able to taste a range of the pinot noir reds and riesling whites. Both groups were extremely distinctive, rather than imitating wines from anywhere else.

The Martin’s Lane Pinot Noir Okanagan Valley Naramata Ranch Vineyard 2020 has terrific mineral freshness with notes of smoked bacon and grilled red pepper plus stacks of red berry aromas. It has a well-crafted, firm tannin structure and should age really well. The contrast between it and the Martin’s Lane Riesling Okanagan Valley Simes Vineyard 2022 could hardly be greater. For that one you need to hold onto your hat, because the pineapple-like acidity of this off-dry wine blasts through the touch of grape sweetness to give an astonishingly dry finish. Stuart loved the aromas of all shades of citrus and Asian pear.

We applaud the combination of quality and originality of these wines. Discoveries like this are no longer common, as the possibilities of Planet Wine have been explored ever more completely since the last turn of the century. Okanagan seems to be one of the final frontiers for the well-known vinifera grape varieties.

AUSTRALIA'S ARSENAL 

Senior Editor Ned Goodwin MW has just returned from a comprehensive tasting in Heathcote, Australia, a region in central Victoria that is largely known for its ancient, red Cambrian soils of decomposed volcanic basalt. The town of Heathcote is 110 kilometers north of Melbourne, yet the southern extremity of the region is defined by a very different geology encompassing granitic outcrops and boulders.

The soils are largely home to powerful expressions of shiraz, marked by ferrous tannins and aromas of terracotta, according to winemaker Simon Osicka of Paul Osicka wines. While there are many impressive examples that will serve as the focus for future reports, Ned was particularly struck by the prescience of the region's winemakers and their newer plantings of Mediterranean cultivars, both Italian and Rhone.

Ned believes that these fresher plantings serve as a genetic arsenal in the face of climate change, while auguring future greatness. According to Tobias Ansted of Tellurian Wines: “I planted some of these varieties as blending agents. But the quality of the wines that they produce suggests that they can stand alone.”

Indeed, Tellurian’s carignan, grenache gris and grenache, all 2022, are excellent. The ebullient Liam Anderson of Wild Duck Creek Estate, the craftsman behind the stellar Wild Duck Creek Estate Roussanne Spruce 2022, avers that although the vines are still young, “they promise so much.”

Ned relished the comparative blind tastings that the region’s winemakers conducted, complemented by free-thinking, constructive opinions and the incisive narrative provided by Simon and Adam Foster of Syrahmi Wines, each drawing on experience accreted in the Rhone with the likes of Chave and Chapoutier, respectively.

There were tastings of Italianate wines of both colors – white Rhone, shiraz, grenache and other Rhone expressions. Yet it was the demarcators of geology and aspect – important barometers of place as much as the bevy of promising wines from fiano, roussanne, grenache of all hues, mourvedre, carignan and falanghina – that impressed Ned.

Wines of note included the Condie Mataro Heathcote School House Lane 2021, Silver Spoon’s Grenache The Stirling 2022, Chalmers’ lip-smacking Falanghina 2022 and the textural tour de force that is Lo Stesso Fiano 2023, from Emily McNally at Jasper Hill. And the Heathcote 2 Grenache 2021 is a wine of such paradoxical freshness and power that it sears itself into the memory bank.

Some regions sit on their laurels and wait for the parting of the seas, but Heathcote is dynamic, creative and resolute. Great things are happening, and even better things lie on the horizon.

TESTAMENT TO ELEGANCE

In China, senior editor Zekun Shuai recently spent two days in Hebei’s Huailai appellation, where he visited two of the region’s leading producers, Canaan Winery and Domaine Franco-Chinois, and tasted a few dozen wines.

The two wineries’ 2018 red releases stand as a testament to elegance and refinement, exhibiting more of a medium-bodied and linear profile compared with the denser, fuller, and glossier 2017 – one of the hottest and driest vintages in the last decade. In contrast, 2018 had more rainfall and was almost as hot as 2017, according to Zhao Desheng, the chief winemaker for both Canaan and Domaine Franco-Chinois.

While wet and warm conditions introduced some mildew for early-ripening cultivars such as merlot and tempranillo, the heat also ensured tannin ripeness. The tannins in the reds this year display a mealier and dustier texture instead of being crunchy.

Canaan’s top releases this year are their syrahs, which all display a high level of consistency. As for their white wines, their 2020 chardonnays exhibit freshness from the cooler year, plus purity and precision with a less leesy character, giving them an old-school feel. The sharp, reductive and austere Chapter and Verse Chardonnay Huailai Reserve 诗百篇珍藏霞多丽 2020 is a great example.

The top-rated wine at Domaine Franco-Chinois is their marselan – a very climate-transparent variety. The cooler vintages tend to give more floral and peppery notes, and the warmer vintages are often spicier and more tarry with some dried-lychee character.

The Domaine Franco Chinois Marselan Huailai Reserve 中法庄园珍藏马瑟兰 2018 is a little closed now, but the complexity from the fruit and the finesse make it a compelling marselan, epitomizing the controlled allure – some would say flamboyance – of the grape.

Finally, two of our top wines this week are from the Swiss winery Soledi, a couple of kilometers from the border with Italy. Their terraced vineyard in Ticino is planted to merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and petit verdot vines, half of which are over 50 years of age.

We were impressed by the Soledi Rosso del Ticino Nik1 2020, a polished and tight Bordeaux-style blend showing fantastic freshness and a citrus edge, with a little more density than the 2019. We also liked the Soledi Rosso del Ticino Emiole 2020, a cabernet franc-led blend with some merlot, for its fragrant aromas, depth and focus. Both need another couple of years in bottle. 2020 is only their fourth vintage, but these wines are the best that we have tasted yet and are already impressive. One to watch.

– Stuart Pigott, Ned Goodwin MW, Zekun Shuai and Claire Nesbitt 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.

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