Weekly Tasting Report (Sept 14-20): Masterful Mosels, a Stunning Clonakilla and Our Spanish March Continues

Germany dominates this report on the wines we tasted from around the world over the past week, with some of the best producers of the Mosel Valley receiving incredible scores. Senior Editor Stuart Pigott continues to highly rate dozens of wines from the 2020 vintage with nearly identical scores as the legendary 2019 vintage, even though he says that Germany’s most recent vintage in bottle is not at the same level of consistent quality.

The Kabinett category of German wine is all about the irresistible lightness and crispness of riesling, but around the turn of the century some winemakers tried too hard and these wines tipped over into untypical richness. That was never our thing, so we're delighted to see young winemakers like Julian Haart of Piesport move these wines back in the diamond-bright direction.

2020 is clearly an excellent vintage for wines of this style in the Mosel. They remind us of the excellent 2017s, but the best of them, like the Kabinetts from Willi Schaefer, are even more extraordinary. None, however, was better than the Julian Haart Riesling Mosel Ohligsberg Kabinett (White Label) 2020, the first perfect wine in this category we have ever encountered. It is part of this winemaker's reinvention of the Kabinett category, an innovation of radical importance for the Mosel.

Stuart’s exuberance about this pour was palpable. “Hang onto your hat and switch on your brain, because it's really hard to fully grasp this incredibly wild and totally original Mosel riesling,” he said.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF GERMANY 2020

EXTRAORDINARY INTENSITY

How did Haart do it? This wine comes from 120-year-old vines that yielded little but gave the wine its extraordinary intensity. By hitting exactly the right harvesting date (early enough!), Haart was able get the wine as bright as a supernova.

Haart originally wanted to become a Michelin-starred chef but found working in kitchens of that kind just too stressful, so he returned to the Mosel and took over his uncle's vineyards. His first vintage was 2010, when he produced just 600 bottles, and he now works those much larger vineyards with his wife, Nadine. Their breakthrough vintage was 2017, and we rated the Julian Haart Riesling Mosel Schubertslay Auslese *** 2017 (the stars/asterisks are part of the name) a perfect 100 points.

Clemens Busch is another winery that made some stunning white wines in the Mosel in 2021, and Stuart also gave some great scores to a few classic wineries in the Rheinhessen and Nahe, like the single-vineyard dry and top sweet wines from Kühling-Gillot, Schäfer-Fröhlich and Wagner-Stempel. In addition, he managed to taste (and drink!) a couple bottles of classy young Burgundies, including the Domaine de la Romanée Conti Echézeaux Grand Cru 2017, which he said showed “delicate rooty notes” and lots of tannins, as well as the “expansive” Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin Grand Cru 2016.

Meanwhile, Contributing Editor Nick Stock had time to find a few great wines from Australia’s Clonakilla, particularly the Syrah Canberra District Murrumbateman 2019, which he said was of “stunning quality.” He was also really enthused about a couple of Nocturne wines from Margaret River that you should check out. We will be tasting more Western Australian wines in the coming weeks in Hong Kong, with Claire Nesbitt, Kevin Davy and myself excited to rate the wines.

SPANISH SWEET SPOT

We are finally wrapping up our Spanish tastings, with 220 wines rated in this report out of the more than 1,500 Spanish wines we expect to rate this year. I find that Spain is producing so many outstanding wines at reasonable prices. It might be the best value producer in red wines in Europe at the moment.

Our top Spanish wines from this past week came from Rioja’s Olivier Rivière and Priorat’s Terroir al Limit – the single-vineyard bottlings of Losares and Les Tosses, respectively. Their aromatic complexity and clarity are what really strike you at first, but the wines deliver an equally complete palate of dense yet balanced fruit and fine yet powerful tannins. The reds from Envínate, which is based in the Ribeira Sacra, are equally compelling and should not be missed. Their black pepper, clove and slate undertones are amazing both on the nose and palate.

The sweet spot for most of the Spanish wines in this report is 90 to 92 points, with the majority in the $15 to $25 a bottle range. So my point should be taken on the value aspect of Spanish wine this year.

That’s all for now. Please remember that you can sort the list below by score, producer and country, among other criteria, so you can find the wineries you follow in this report.

James Suckling, Chairman/Editor, with Senior Editor Stuart Pigott

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the previous week by James and 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.