A Rebirth on the Saar, and Japan Sharpens Its Focus: Weekly Tasting Report (Sept 27-Oct 3)

Our latest Weekly Tasting Report covers nine countries and 770 wines, highlighted by Senior Editor Stuart Pigott continued tasting mission in Germany. Stuart traveled to the Saar and Ruwer, both tributaries of the Mosel close to the former Roman capital city of Trier, where during daylight hours the harvest was in full swing with perfectly dry sunny weather.

Stuart’s first stop was the historic Prussian State Domaine in Serrig, which was acquired by leading Middle Mosel producer Markus Molitor in 2016. Molitor has made huge investments there, replanting 20 of the 25 hectares that make up the monopole Vogelsang site. These are some of the steepest vineyards in the entire world, with grades of up to 105 percent, or 46.4 degrees.

Another pile of money has been spent renovating and extending the historic buildings that date from 1904 to 1906. Stuart had to weave his way around a small army of busy workmen and climb unfinished staircases while Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA blared from a boom box.

Molitor explained that they have removed thousands of tons of rubble by hand while reconstructing the historic winery, in the meantime making wines at Molitor’s Haus Klosterberg winery until it is rebuilt. The renovated complex is due to open next year, but that depends on construction progress and the Department of Historic Buildings giving approval. The winery has been renamed Ehemalige Domane Serrig, with Ehemalige, or “former,” attached for legal reasons.

Molitor's plan is to make just two wines per vintage – the Ehemalige Domäne Serrig Riesling Mosel Vogelsang Grosse Lage and Ehemalige Domäne Serrig Riesling Mosel Vogelsang Kabinett. Molitor presented Stuart with the first two wines, both from the 2020 vintage, and quite apart from the extraordinary place, it was worth visiting to experience them.

The former is a stunning dry GG type wine that is astonishingly cool and youthful for the hot and dry vintage. The aromas range from damp moss to pink grapefruit with notes of fresh thyme and white flowers. On the vibrant medium-bodied palate the concentration of wet stone minerality climbing precipitously at the very long tensile finish.

The Kabinett is a theoretically light and off-dry style – a generous wine that is juicy on the front palate but emphatically dry at the finish. Its herb garden, grapefruit and pomelo aromas are very distinctive.

Both wines are being marketed exclusively through the Place de Bordeaux, which a small group of German producers recently started using. The vineyard name Vogelsang, which means “birdsong” in German, is printed large on the label.

On the Ruwer, Stuart visited another historic winery that is undergoing a major turnaround with serious renovation and reconstruction work – Weingut Karthauserhof. Just imagine how complex that process is when the oldest parts of the building are oak beams dating back to 1321 and it is leaning like the famous bell tower in Pisa!

Karthauserhof is owned by Albert Behler, the president and CEO of the Paramount property group in New York, who took over the estate from his cousin Christoph Tyrell back in 2012. Mathieu Kauffmann, who previously worked for Champagne Bollinger and Reichsrat von Buhl in Pfalz, Germany, has been the winemaker since 2020, while Dominik Volk, who formerly worked for Weingut Van Volxem on the Saar, has been the cellarmaster since 2022.

Together they are making the wines from the monopole Karthauserhofberg site, one hectare of which is planted with weissburgunder, or pinot blanc, and the remaining 27 hectares with riesling. The vineyards currently are under conversion to organic viticulture.

The focus here is also on dry wines, and the soon to be released Karthäuserhof Riesling Mosel Alte Reben Trocken 2022 shows why. It is extremely fresh with stacks of herbal complexity plus notes of licorice, lemon blossom and zest. The tension on the palate is remarkable for the 2022 vintage in this region, the finish very long and silky.

The winery also makes excellent off-dry rieslings with natural grape sweetness like the fabulous Karthäuserhof Riesling Mosel Karthäuserhofberg Spätlese 2022. It leaps and bounds over the palate, which feels almost weightless. The breathtaking minerality pushes the touch of sweetness way into the background. Kaufmann and Volk look to be a dream team for the estate.

A wild ferment video shot in the cellar of  Weingut Karthaeuserhof.

Study the tasting notes below and you will find many other exciting Mosel rieslings from the 2022 vintage, some of which were produced in limited quantities and therefore don't get a shout here. Stuart found 2022 to be excellent for dry-style wines, with Zilliken in Saarburg on the Saar making the best dry rieslings in the winery’s history. The shining star among them was the Zilliken Riesling Mosel Rausch Diabas 2022, which simultaneously has great aromatic tension (think bergamot, Amalfi lemon and floral honey), yet is wonderfully graceful and silky on the palate. From the strict analytical point of view this is not bone dry, but it comes across as dry enough.

The same applies to the Von Hövel Riesling Mosel Monopollage Hörecker 2022 with its delicate nose of peach and orange blossom. Wet sone minerality cascades over your palate of this beauty. Maximillian von Kunow, the winemaker,  understands that dry Saar wine demands a great feeling or balance and flexibility on the analytical stats.

In our Hong Kong office, meanwhile, we had a rare tasting of some back vintages of Maxine Chapoutier wines, including the M. Chapoutier Ermitage L’Ermite. During our tastings of M. Chapoutier’s latest releases back in April, we gave the 2020 vintage Ermitage L’Ermite a perfect score – a testament to the unique and powerful terroir of the single vineyard atop the renowned Hill of Hermitage that this wine comes from.

The Ermitage L’Ermite 2013, a 100 percent syrah wine from old vines, was a welcome addition to our tasting table, as we had not previously rated the vintage because it came from a middling year. After 10 years of aging, though, the nose has become striking in its complexity, with notes of berries, grilled meat, lard and herbs.

The palate, too, is a revelation, with a mineral backbone bringing lots of verticality to an already ample and voluminous wine. The result is stunning: this is a wine with great balance and clarity. It is delicious now but it should age beautifully for patient collectors.

THROUGH A JAPANESE LENS

Japan is a relative newcomer to wine production, although a small cottage industry has enjoyed periods of gentle growth and repose since the middle of the 19th century. Japanese wine has changed radically since Ned Goodwin MW lived in the country from 2002-2014, when most wine was pasteurized and given as gifts.

As the most developed wine culture in Asia, Japanese wine lovers have been everywhere and tasted many things, making for a demanding local scene founded on precision, delicacy and craftsmanship. While the industry remains a cottage one in production terms, with small plots of vines here and there rather than swaths of vineyards and phalanxes of fermentation tanks seen elsewhere, the typical Japanese dynamic is one of tiny agrarian holdings, miniature plots evocative of a true farming culture.

Labor and land costs have plummeted since the heady economic days of yore. For many Japanese interested in crafting wine, turning to their home turf is intuitive, less expensive and certainly more pragmatic given the language and cultural barriers that Japanese still struggle with. Moreover, a strong ethnocentric culture prizes homegrown provenance, making better Japanese wine an attractive proposition.

In Hokkaido, where top Burgundian producer De Montille has a vineyard, quality can be a bit discombobulated. Yet the best wines are subtle, restrained, poised and eminently digestible. Some wines can also lack acidity, although the De Montille & Hokkaido Co. Ltd. Kerner Hakodate Hokkaido 2020 from the Hakodate region is a scintillating exception.

Many wines also lack tannins that Westerners prize as a bane of savoriness. Yet rather than glimpsing things through a Western lens, Atsuo Yamanaka, former pro snowboarder and pinot gris specialist at Domaine Mont in the Yoichi region, believes that one must see the wines through a Japanese one. His Pinot Gris Dom Gris 2020 and 2018 scuttle the varietal paradigm while shapeshifting the tenets of quality. These are renowned locally for ageability founded on extended skin maceration and 100 percent whole bunch. The end result is compelling: colors of a fortified wine with accents of Earl Grey, chestnut and ginger. A scrunch of whole-bunch tannins screech across the finish for structural impact.

Shige Kihara at Mongaku Valley Winery, also in Yoichi, stresses the importance of local wines with nuanced textures. He cites umami, particularly that found in dashi hewn of shiitake and konbu (rather than meat), as the most important dictate for a wine’s capacity at the Japanese table. This may explain many wines’ soft structural latticework. As he notes, “hard tannins make dashi taste bitter.”

Kihara’s Tochi 2022 is an exquisite field blend based on pinot noir, of which he enthuses, “we make things interesting for ourselves as we blend the juice of each variety, rather than the fermented cuves.”

– Stuart Pigott, Kevin Davy 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.