Dazzlers from the Danube and Sting’s Sacred Love: Weekly Tasting Report (Sept 7-13)

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team rated 847 wines over the past week from nine countries, with Austria and Italy comprising the lion’s share of the ratings and Portugal and Spain also weighing in with a few choice offerings.

But our two top-scoring bottles were uncovered by Senior Stuart Pigott in Austria, where he tasted more than 300 wines with the focus firmly on the single-vineyard dry whites of the 2021 vintage from the wine region within the valley of the Danube and its tributaries.

“There’s no doubt that 2021 is an excellent vintage for the dry whites of these regions,” Stuart said. “It also has a unique personality: the 2021s are extremely aromatic, vibrant and refreshing, often with moderate alcohol.”

Even a quick glance at the tasting notes and ratings below show that dry riesling was the most consistent category in 2021, with a slew of great wines plus two perfect ones. For winemaker Martin Nigl of the Kremstal region, the Nigl Riesling Kremstal Ried Hochäcker Privat 2021 is a career high with a breathtaking combination of enormous concentration and raciness. Stuart said it reminded him of the excellent 2001, except that “it’s ever finer and more mineral.”

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRIA 2021

The other shining star of the vintage is the F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Ried Kellerberg – a wine that combines enormous power with dazzling precision. Here, too, the alcoholic content is a moderate 13 percent. “We have very high acidity in the 2021s, but it tastes so ripe. Right from the beginning it was so beautifully integrated,” said winemaker Lucas Pichler. “2021 reminds me of the great 1999 vintage.”

We couldn’t agree more. And the same is true of a stack of high-scoring 2021 dry rieslings from Johann Donabaum, Josef Jamek, Emmerich Knoll, Rudi Pichler and Prager in the Wachau, Proidl in the Kremstal, Hirsch in the Kamptal and Markus Huber in the Traisental. They’re all hot on the heels of the Nigl and F.X. Pichler perfect pair.

This situation is all the result of a much less extreme growing season than in neighboring Germany or in France in 2021. More detail on this will follow in our Austria report.

“Gruner veltliner is Austria’s signature variety, but quality was more mixed than for riesling in 2021,” Stuart observed. “In general, the wines that grew on stony soils show better than those from the fertile and water retentive loess soils.” The former group in 2021 tended to share the special qualities of the dry rieslings, while the latter were often on the broad and weighty side, the alcoholic content at 14 percent is harvested late.

Stuart is currently on the road in Styria and Burgenland and reports from there next week.

Still on his forever wine-tasting road trip was James, who made it back to his U.S. base in Napa, California, from Italy, with stop-overs in Spain and New York, the latter for our Great Wines of Italy Grand Tasting. James has been on the road since February, when he left Hong Kong for the first time since the pandemic began, and he’ll return there in early October for our Great Wines of the World Hong Kong Grand Tasting.

It was a late-released wine and an icon of Portugal that caught James’ attention in his tastings – Barca Velha. James tasted the most recent vintage on market, 2011, with Casa Ferreirinha winemaker Luis Sottomayor. He found this extremely deep red from the Douro to be “full-bodied with deep intensity, power and finesse,” calling it “a tribute to the first great Barca Velhas of the 1960s.”

It's made with grapes from the upper Douro and combines richness with firm and linear tannins and acidity. It’s also a semi-unicorn wine because it has only been released 20 times since 1952, with the 2011 being the latest version.

James also had a taste of the newest merlot from Sting (yes, that Sting), Il Palagio Toscana Sacred Love 2020, which is made by Riccardo Cotarella and proves that Valdarno di Sopra, Italy, which also boasts Sette Ponti and Petrolo, is a great region for merlot.

READ MORE: TOP 100 VALUE WINES OF 2021

ICY FRESH FROM RIBERA DEL DUERO

In our Hong Kong office, we concluded our Spanish tastings for the year and wrote about all the nearly 2,500 wines we rated from the country in one colossal annual report.

The last few samples from Ribera del Duero’s 2020 vintage arrived fashionably late, but they were icing on our Spanish tarta. Few wines in Ribera del Duero are akin to Bertrand Sourdais’ Dominio de Es offerings, each a unique expression of old-vine terroirs showing typical Ribera del Duero structure.

Rain in late September delayed the 2020 harvest in Ribera del Duero but added extra freshness to the wines, giving them immense fluidity and freshness. The Dominio de Es wines came with a beautiful, ethereal nose – a rare quality for Ribera del Duero and one more associated with pinot noir and, of course, great Burgundy. On the palate, the wines share a distinctive chalky texture – austere yet pure, fresh and stony. There is also a vivid, Barolo touch to the palate, all adding up to a truly unique experience from Ribera del Duero.

Another standout from Ribera del Duero comes from Bodegas Aalto, a project co-founded in 1999 by Mariano García Fernández, the former technical director of Vega Sicilia.

The Bodegas Aalto Ribera del Duero PS 2020 is a typical expression of Ribera del Duero with impressive ripeness and concentration from the low-yielding 60- to 90-year-old vines, yet it remains well-balanced and juicy. It is a more profound expression of the vintage, showing well-judged oak spiciness to the darker fruit. The real highlights of the wine are the melted tannins and the length of the finish, which make it enjoyable now, even though it should age beautifully.

– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor; Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor

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.