Alsace’s Amazing 2022s, Plus Collectible California Cabs: Weekly Tasting Report (May 8-14)

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott was in Alsace over the past week tasting the wines of the 2022 vintage from a row of top producers and was amazed by what he found. 2022 was another hot and dry vintage, like 2020 and the three preceding vintages, but the best wines were extremely bright and focused. Clearly, lessons have been learned and techniques for dealing with the new climatic situation have been further refined.

One of the clearest conclusions Stuart drew was that 2022 was a sensational vintage for dry riesling from the grand cru sites with granitic soils, such as the Schlossberg, Brand and the less well-known Wineck-Schlossberg. None is more extraordinary than the Domaine Weinbach Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Schlossberg Ste. Catherine 2022, which is a perfect masterpiece of minerality. It is extremely concentrated and still very youthful, and the stone fruit aromas you get now are just the tip of the iceberg of fruit that lies beneath the still surface. It is the pinnacle of an astonishing range of wines from this famous producer that are all extremely precise and refined. Even Domaine Weinbach's gewurztraminers have such delicacy and spot-on balance that they are delightful, rather than demanding, to drink.

Almost as amazing is the Domaine Zind Humbrecht Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Brand 2022, a great work of finesse. Here the stone fruit aromas are much more, in fact they’re already breathtaking, and the intensely stony finish has terrific freshness.

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Zind Humbrecht is as well-known for pinot gris as for riesling, and this year brought a giant exception in this category. In general, the acidity levels of the pinot gris from 2022 (indeed of all grape varieties) are significantly below those of the unusually crisp 2021 vintage. However, the Domaine Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Alsace Grand Cru Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Urbain 2022 has lightning-strike freshness and raciness married to incredible exotic fruit, spice and smoky complexity. Stuart has never come across an Alsace pinot gris quite like this before, even from this exceptional site with its volcanic soil.

This year the famous Alsace wine house of Trimbach in Ribeauville celebrates the 100th anniversary of its legendary dry riesling from the Clos Ste. Hune, a 1.67-hectare plot that belongs to the Rosacker Grand Cru site (which is never mentioned on the label).

Stuart was one of the first to taste the Trimbach Riesling Alsace Clos Ste. Hune 2022, which is another great vintage for this unique dry white wine. It has incredible ripe peach, pear and mirabelle plum aromas and gives you wave after wave of beauty on the expansive palate, before the finish glides off into the sunrise. You’ll need to wait for three years for the release, though.

Stuart was impressed with the entire row of Trimbach dry rieslings (including four grand crus), and one of these is a real globetrotter that you should be able to find just about everywhere on Planet Wine.

The Trimbach Riesling Alsace 2022 is a fantastic entry-level wine with a wide spectrum of citrus and stone fruits plus the cool elegance that this producer is rightly renowned for.

Just down the road is the much less well-known house of Kientzler, where Eric Kientzler made his best-ever wines in 2022. In the past, these wines could be quite austere in a way that delighted acid and mineral hounds, but which some others found a bit hard going. All the single-vineyard dry rieslings of the 2022 vintage have a vein of juicy fruit running through them to balance the intense stony character. The Kientzler Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Geisberg 2022 is the star, with incredible structure and profound crushed rock character.

Another under-the-radar producer is Domaine Barmes-Buecher, run by the brother and sister team of Sophie and Maxime Barmes. The diversity of excellent wines here is extraordinary and Stuart felt that many of the wines from lieu-dit (named sites that are not grand crus) tasted like grand cru wines. Nowhere was this more startling than in the Domaine Barmès-Buecher Sylvaner Alsace Rosenberg 2022, the finest sylvaner Stuart has ever tasted in Alsace. He described the aromas as being like walking through an herb garden in the morning with a whiff of smoke in the air, and Stuart rarely uses this kind of language. He loved the breathtaking mineral freshness. Even more amazing was the enormously concentrated Domaine Barmès-Buecher Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Hengst 2022, which has a truly awesome finish.

This famous site is also the source for some of the greatest Alsace pinot noirs ever made. From the 2022 vintage these wines are finally allowed to use the Grand Cru designation on the label. Stuart found it hard to get past the overwhelming and enveloping nose of the perfect Albert Mann Pinot Noir Alsace Grand Cru Hengst Grand H 2022, with its nose of an entire garden of summer flowers and berries. It has giant depth but is so refined and precise on the palate.  However, it was almost equaled by the fabulous Albert Mann Pinot Noir Alsace Les Saintes Claires 2022, with its super-sensual interplay of concentrated sour cherry fruit and extremely fine tannins. This, too, is the match for the finest grand cru wines Burgundy has to offer.

COLLECTIBLE CALIFORNIA CABS

One of California’s most collectible cabernet sauvignons does not come from Napa Valley. Executive Editor Jim Gordon last week tasted the newly released Ridge Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains Monte Bello 2021 and gave it a perfect score, calling it massively concentrated, taut but trim. It was aged in all-new barrels, predominantly American, which is quite unusual for a top California cabernet.

This singular vineyard property, with some vines dating back to the 19^th century, sits atop Monte Bello Mountain at an elevation of 2,700 feet, overlooking Cupertino, California, the humming center of Silicon Valley. The vineyard looks west to the Pacific Ocean, stays remarkably cool at night and is perfectly exposed to the sun during the warm days.

These conditions and the sloping, well-drained soils result in a consistently intense, tannic and age-worthy cabernet that is known to age well for several decades and stands nearly alone as an international-level cabernet from the mountainous Santa Cruz region. Ridge’s Chardonnay Santa Cruz Mountains Monte Bello 2022, sourced from several parcels on the same mountain, was the second most impressive of 11 Ridge wines tasted. It's wonderfully concentrated and full-bodied but somehow light on its feet. The limestone soil and Wente clone vines, which were planted in 1982, help give it an almost dense but elegant feel.

The wines were tasted at Ridge Vineyards’ northern Sonoma County winery, Lytton Springs Estate. On hand were Lytton Springs winemaker Shauna Rosenblum, assistant winemaker Michael Bairdsmith and long-time Ridge Vineyards COO and head winemaker John Olney.

The wines made at Lytton Springs are well known for an emphasis on old vines, often field blends of California heritage grape varieties like zinfandel, mataro (mourvedre), carignan, barbera and petite sirah. Most outstanding among these reds were the iconic, delicious and lush Alexander Valley Geyserville 2022 and a brand-new Ridge zin from Napa Valley’s long-established Green & Red vineyard with its black pepper and wild sage signature.

From a quite different side of Sonoma County were the Black Kite pinot noirs and chardonnays Jim tasted at the small winery’s new hospitality location near the seaside resort town of Bodega Bay. Black Kite is named for a bird, not the wind-borne toy on a string, but the five pinot noirs and one chardonnay reviewed in this report were definitely high-flyers.

The Black Kite Chardonnay Sonoma Mountain Richard Dinner Vineyard 2021 comes from a small parcel planted in 1982 with Old Wente clone vines and delivers a wonderfully concentrated but somehow light-on-its-feet expression that combines crisp green apple and lemon zest with custard and cream nuances.

Owners Tom Birdsall and Rebecca Green Birdsall talked about how Black Kite got its start with mostly Mendocino County grapes although today Sonoma sources, including their own estate vineyard near the coast, dominate their range of bottlings. Tops among the reds in the tasting were two from Anderson Valley, the multi-site Black Kite Pinot Noir Angel Hawk 2021 and Black Kite Pinot Noir Wendling Vineyard 2021 from a hillside property.

BAROLO'S LOCKDOWN VINTAGE

Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli was in Piedmont tasting the latest releases from Barolo and Barbaresco. In Barolo, he found that one of the reasons behind the enjoyability of Barolo’s 2020 vintage is that wine producers were able to dedicate themselves full time to their vineyards during the Covid lockdown year. Not only was there a mild, rain-free spring and a sunny September in 2020, but the detailed, plant-by-plant care allowed for the perfect ripening of grapes and tannins.

But there was an important distinction to be made between those producers who harvested before two days of rain at the beginning of October and those who harvested after, Aldo said – the wines from the former category have a certain rawness but those in the latter have a richness and delightful balance. Compared with 2020, though, Aldo found that 2019 was a more classic vintage, meaning it will need time to fully express itself.

The best vineyards of Monforte and Serralunga were once again top performers in 2020, with small producers like Davide Fregonese and his Barolo Cerretta 2020 standing tall alongside established names like Giovanni Rosso and Massolino.

Among the producers who are best interpreting the territory today is Poderi Aldo Conterno, which has found a better balance compared with the past and produces wines like the deep and complex Colonnello 2020. “Global warming is a boon for Barolo,” Giacomo Conterno explained. “We must exploit the organoleptic evolution of nebbiolo musts, not counteract it.”

Meanwhile, Cantina Produttori stands out in Barbaresco for the quality-price ratio of its wines, as exemplified by the Rabaja Riserva 2019, while their Asili 2019 shows terrific finesse and elegance. There are other "powerful" 2021 offerings Aldo rated from the likes of Ca’ del Baio and Carlo Giacosa to check out in the tasting notes below.

– Stuart Pigott, Jim Gordon and Aldo Fiordelli 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.