Firing on All Cylinders in the Mosel, Plus Digging into Italy and Spain: Weekly Tasting Report (June 7-13)

Sometimes when we have to catch up on wines that slipped through the net of our tasting schedule the results are unspectacular, and it’s just more work for us. However, when Senior Editor Stuart Pigott caught up with the 2021 vintage wines from Nik Weis in the Mosel, he was greatly impressed.

With its substantial vineyard holdings in the Middle Mosel and the Saar, this winery always had great potential, but for some years it didn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders. Then Weis appointed Kai Hausen as winemaker in April 2019 and things moved fast from that moment. “Finally, I had a partner in the cellar whose ideas aligned with my own,” Weis said.

2021 was no easy vintage on the Mosel, although acid-head riesling fans have acclaimed it for the piercing acidity that was typical. When it is dominant, the wines are a bit hard and tart, but Stuart was impressed by the excellent balance of the whole 2021 Nik Weis lineup.

The spatlese and auslese wines with natural grape sweetness were the stars, and they were a tight pack. However, for Stuart the Nik Weis Riesling Mosel Goldtröpfchen Auslese 2021 was the standout thanks to its breathtaking combination of aromatic complexity and racy brilliance. For Stuart it is logical that this wine should stand out, because the Nik Weis winery owns one of the prime parcels in the famous Goldtropfchen site.

“I’d say this is proof that Nik Weis and Kai Hausen are a dream team!“ Stuart said.

In Italy, Tastings Editor Jo Cooke encountered two classy reds from the Binomio winery in the region of Abruzzo. He was stunned in particular by the Binomio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva 2019. Montepulciano reds can often feel a bit beefy, and in some cases over-oaked, at the expense of real complexity. But the Riserva 2019 is a nimble, just over medium-bodied red with a solid core of fruity, floral and mineral notes and a super-relaxed texture on the palate.

It comes from a twin project between top Venetian winemaker Stefano Inama, who is best known for his Soave whites, and Sabatino Properzio of the renowned La Valentina winery in Abruzzo. The collaboration was born in 1997 with the joint purchase of an old-vine vineyard of just over four hectares in the heart of the Montepulciano production zone.

This may be the finest wine that these two wine wizards have made, offering a kind of Burgundian elegance to a local grape variety that, half a century ago, was more likely to appear in jug wines.

In the same flight was the Binomio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Collezione Riserva 2017, a bottling that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the joint venture. It’s a bolder rendering that is built to last, with a spicier and more licoricy character and more substantial tannin. This is one to cellar for a while, but it’s exciting to taste now.

We have also been diving into Italian wines in our Hong Kong tasting office, and some of this week’s standouts have been from the country’s northern Trentino-Alto Adige region. Here, a wide range of varieties are grown, of which many are international grapes like pinot grigio, chardonnay, pinot blanc and pinot noir, making the region unique in Italy.

One of the outstanding whites wines from Alto Adige we tasted was the Elena Walch Gewürztraminer Alto Adige Vigna Kastelaz 2021, a beautifully perfumed and spicy offering that wows with its concentration of flowers and pink and tropical fruit. It’s produced by one of the region’s highly respected winemakers, Elena Walch, who began making wines under her own label in the 1980s. Walch’s counterpoint to the gewurztraminer is a serious, mineral and phenolic pinot grigio: the Alto Adige Vigna Castel Ringberg 2022. Also coming from the Castel Ringberg vineyard is the 2020 Riserva Chardonnay, which is intense and full-bodied and keeps giving with generous and persistent notes of lemon curd and apple crumble.

Another top Alto Adige chardonnay we tasted is from the cooperative Kurtatsch, where grapes are grown and vinified by 190 families. We liked their toasty and complex Kurtatsch Chardonnay Alto Adige Freienfeld Riserva 2020, a generous and creamy expression that retains freshness and balance.

Also check out a new wine from the old and historic Abbazia di Novacella winery, the Sylvaner Alto Adige Valle Isarco Stiftsgarten 2019. It’s an impressive rendition of sylvaner showing complex and caressing layers of chamomile, praline and salty yellow fruit, with creamy and milky undertones.

READ MORE TOP 100 VALUE WINES OF 2022 ($40 OR LESS!)

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MONASTRELL

And for the Spanish wines we tasted in Hong Kong over the past week, the ­­­­­­Mediterranean energy was palpable in a few exciting monastrells from Atlan & Artisan’s Epistem wines, an organically farmed project that focuses on monastrell and bobal made by Sebastian Keller and Phillippe Bramaz, who also have projects in Mallorca (8 Vents) and the Mosel.

Their old, ungrafted monastrells from the Espernalas vineyards in Jumilla, at 900 meters above the sea level, are entirely different from the majority of ripe and fruity monastrells from Yecla and Jumilla. With their 60-year-old-plus vines grown on brown, calcareous, water-retentive soils that help retain freshness, their Atlan & Artisan Monastrell Yecla Espernalas 2021 is a very serious proposition, delivering exceptional depth and freshness.

It is expansive, concentrated and structured, without being heavy or jammy. Instead, the tangy Mediterranean herbs, juicy fruit and the bountiful, chalky tannins render a sense of place to the monastrell. It is a wine you can approach now but will withstand and benefit from bottle aging. The 2020 Espernalas is equally convincing, and it comes with a little less density and concentration but with more vibrancy and fluidity on the palate, making it attractive even at a young age. The wine is aged 20 months in 500-liter French puncheons without showing oak adornment or sweetness.

The value pick here, however, is a monastrell-bobal blend – the Atlan & Artisan Monastrell Yecla Epistem SP Selección de Parcela 2021, which shows the prowess of the two varieties in translating terroir into a Mediterranean context.

– Stuart Pigott, Jo Cooke, Claire Nesbitt and Zekun Shuai 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.