Kunstler’s Terroir Precision, Swartland’s Fresh Chenin Twist and New Zealand’s Surprising 2022: Weekly Tasting Report (Oct 18-24)

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team tapped into 506 wines over the past week, headed by Senior Editor Stuart Pigott, who was hot on the wine trail close to his home in the hills above Frankfurt, Germany, while James and Marie were in New Zealand at their vineyard in Martinborough tasting a few hundred new releases from around New Zealand including such famous names such as Bell Hill, Felton Road, Kumeu River,  Prophet's Rock and Sato. Associate Editors Claire Nesbitt and Kevin Davy were in South Africa tasting more than 500 wines.

First, Stuart. The Kunstler winery is not quite 20 kilometers from Stuart's front door and produced one of the most exciting ranges of wines he has tasted this year of the more than 1,000 he rated this year.

When Stuart first met winemaker Gunter Kunstler in 1990, he was literally making his wines in the garage below the suburban house he grew up in. Back then, the idea of working with grapes from legendary Rheingau vineyard sites like the Marcobrunn was absurd, because they were nearly all in aristocratic hands. But Germany changed along with the rest of the world, and now Gunter has more than two hectares in the Marcobrunn, from which one of the top wines of the 2022 vintage sprang.

The Künstler Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn GG 2022 is an almost perfect giant that stands as tall as a Burgundian grand cru. The full-bodied palate has titanic structure and concentration, and the endless finish has great herbal, mineral and dried citrus peel complexity.

However, this wine is no lone star. Look through the notes below and you will find that Kunstler frequently achieved spectacular results in spite of the challenging 2022 harvest, which was frequently interrupted by rain. “You had to be very precise with timing, with everything in 2022,“ he explained. “We know each vineyard site well, but we also make each wine totally individually. This requires determination and attention to detail.“

The result is not just great quality, but each of Kunstler’s single-vineyard wines has precise terroir expression.

The frequent showers during the harvest period made it very difficult to make noble late-harvest wines, because in most vineyards the botrytis-affected grapes wouldn’t shrivel enough to concentrate the juice. Less noble rot than botrytis also spread in some places. Kunstler pulled off a miracle with his Künstler Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn Auslese 2022. Although it is rich and succulent it smells more like a dry wine with extraordinary purity and precision. It is brimming with stone fruit, wild herbs and spice.

There were also some stunning pinot noir red wines, the most notable being the Künstler Spätburgunder Rheingau Assmannhausen Höllenberg GG 2020. This is very spicy and meaty with enormous black berry (also cassis) aromas. The fantastic silkiness and mind-bending finesse really stand out in the context of a vintage that tends to robustness due to the heat and drought of the 2020 summer. Kunstler invested a great deal of work and money in refining the tannins of his pinot noir reds, and this really showed in the tastings.

Unlike Kunstler, whose vineyards are scattered through almost the entire Rheingau region, the Riffel winery is focused entirely on the vineyards of one commune, Bingen, in the northwestern corner of the large Rheinhessen region. It has a number of special vineyard sites, of which the steep Scharlachberg, with its stony quartzite, stands out.

Until about 30 years ago, Bingen had an excellent reputation, but then the leading producers stopped aiming for top-quality wines and Bingen was quickly forgotten – that is, until Erik and Carolin Riffel came along. They have made a slew of very good and some excellent wines in recent years, and they achieved a breakthrough in the 2022 vintage despite the challenging fall conditions.

The Riffel Riesling Rheinhessen Scharlachberg Trocken 2022 has a breathtaking nose of yellow and white peach with floral, wild herb and crushed rock aromas. The brilliance and the gigantic stony minerality of this extraordinary dry riesling must be tasted to be believed.

A FRESH TWIST ON CHENIN

Claire and Kevin ]were on the ground in South Africa over the past week tasting new releases from across the Western Cape. The standout wines were from the Swartland, a large, climatically diverse area north of Cape Town where old-vine chenin blanc is made into astoundingly fresh and concentrated wines in the hands of top producers like David & Nadia, Sadie Family Wines, Mullineux and A.A. Badenhorst.

Sadie Family Wines’ new cuvee, the 2022 Rotsbank, is a pure chenin blanc offering from bush vines planted in 1987. The name refers to the extremely rocky, granitic soils it comes from. It’s a stunningly complex and powerful wine, with a saltiness and finish that lasts for minutes. Also check out their exciting white blends – the 2022 Skerpioen, which is made from co-fermented chenin blanc and palomino, and the 2021 Palladius, a wild blend of 35 percent chenin blanc with equal parts of 11 other white varieties. Both are wonderfully fresh and intense, the Skerpion with concentrated white and yellow tropical fruit and the Palladius with a seashell-like minerality.

David & Nadia produced a range of beautifully fresh chenin blancs from the 2022 vintage, despite the heat spikes in summer. Their 2022 Skaliekap is a single-vineyard offering from bush vines planted in 1985 on shale soils, offering vivid aromas of citrus and wild herbs and a fantastic tension and acid structure, while their 2022 Platbos, Hoë-Steen and Ronderlei single-vineyard chenin blancs also impressed, along with their 2022 grenache.

As for reds, Porseleinberg made one of the best syrahs we have tasted from the country with its 2021 bottling. It’s a flavor explosion on the palate, from black fruit to grilled herbs, peppercorns and iron, packaged in a firm structure and made with 100 percent whole-bunch syrah picked at leisure from a cool vintage. Meanwhile, Mullineux’s site-specific syrahs – the 2021 Granite and 2021 Schist – are mineral and firm. And Sadie Family’s 2021 Columella, a blend of syrah, mourvedre, carignan, cinsault, grenache and tinta barroca, is fabulously intense and fragrant. These will all benefit from a couple more years in bottle.

For more top single-vineyard bottlings from the Swartland, look out for A.A. Badenhorst’s 2022 chenin blancs – the Steen Klip Kop Haut Granitika, The Golden Slopes and Steen Kelder – as well as their 2022 Ramnagras and Ringmuur cinsaults. We’ve also included in this week’s notes Boekenhoutskloof’s latest wines from 2021, including their Swartland syrah (for which 90 percent of the fruit comes from the Porseleinberg estate), as well a stunningly textural semillon from old vines planted as far back as 1902, which comes from their home base in Franschhoek.

VELVETY LONG DAI

In a recent expedition in China’s Shandong Peninsula, Senior Editor Zekun Shuai embarked on a short tasting trip that led him to the unveiling of the highly anticipated 2021 vintage of Domaine Long Dai, a winery in Yantai Penglai's Qiu Shan Valley under the ownership of Domaines Barons de Rothschild Lafite. The CEO of DBR Lafite, Saskia de Rothschild, and Long Dai’s winemaking team introduced the newest vintage.

According to the winemaking team – cellarmaster Liang Chen, vineyard manager Zhang Peng and technical manager Denise Cosentino – 2021 was a relatively cool vintage in the Qiu Shan Valley. The season began with a wet spring and low temperatures, but a mild, warm July and some water stress in August helped the vines catch up in the grape-growing period. As rains increased in September and October, the team made the decision to harvest early, starting on Sept. 14, with the end of the harvest on Oct. 3.

The 2021 Long Dai emerged as a velvety expression of the vintage and is highlighted by the highest percentage of marselan so far. It boasts a captivating exotic fragrance and polished density, with more blue and purple fruit and flowers than in previous vintages. Cosentino called the quality of marselan in 2021 “exceptional.”  The wine also speaks to the complex mosaic of terroir at Domaine Long Dai, with the rather austere, granitic foundation balanced by the mild, maritime climate.

The other top Chinese wines Zekun Shuai tasted this week came from Xiao Ling, an eye-opening producer situated at breathtaking heights in Yunnan Province’s Shangri-La city. The small vertical of Xiao Ling’s rather Burgundy-like cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend shows how the reds get purer, more precise and succulent with dialed back oak, giving them a unique pinot-esque sensibility with mouthwatering acidity.

– Stuart Pigott, 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.

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