Martinborough’s Old-Vine Flair, Plus The Essence of Hungary: Weekly Tasting Report (Jan 3-9)

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team is already on top of its game in the new year, rating 567 wines over the past week from 14 countries. James was in New Zealand over the holidays at his vineyard, and he decided to visit a few wineries in his area, Martinborough, as well as a couple of others about a three-hour drive north in Hawke’s Bay.

One tasting at Te Kairanga winery in Martinborough delivered some extraordinary old-vine pinot noirs – the Martinborough Vineyard Pinot Noir Martinborough Marie Zelie Reserve 2019 and Martinborough Vineyard Pinot Noir Martinborough 40th Anniversary Special Release 2018. The wineries of Martinborough Vineyard and Te Kairanga share the same owner, Foley Wines, which is owned by the Foley Family of the United States.

Both pinots are from the best area of Martinborough, which is called the “gravelly terrace” and comprises alluvial soil with a mixture of small stones at various depths, depending on the location. These vineyards were first planted in the 1980s and are some of the oldest in the area.

The 2018 40^th Anniversary Special Release is a little less flashy than the Zelie, with plenty of ripeness as well as structure. Part of the blend is clone 10/5 planted in the 1980s, with the rest in Abel and Pommard 5. It has about 15 percent whole-berry fermentation, aged 13 months in French barrels (32 percent new) and left in bottle another 24 months before release.

James noted that that these are both classic Martinborough pinots in character and are small-production wines, with only a few thousand bottles made of the two, combined.

The other noteworthy red he tasted was the famous Bordeaux blend from Te Mata called Coleraine. The Te Mata Hawkes Bay Coleraine 2022 will be released in March and shows beautiful aromatics and a fresh and vivid palate, not to mention a sleek structure. It’s not at the same level for James as the fabulous 2021 but is very close in quality to 2020. It’s surprisingly outstanding considering the wet weather late in the season in 2022.

“There are elements of the 2007 and the 2014 in the 2022,” said Te Mata winemaker Phil Brodie. “I go to 2014 more than anything else. But it’s probably between 2013 and 2014.”

Brenton O’Riley, the head viticulturalist at Te Mata, added about the success of the 2022 Coleraine: “It’s not so much how you do in a great vintage but it’s how you come through in a difficult vintage. That’s the test of everything you do, and I believe in that.”

We are thinking that a lot of the top winemakers in Bordeaux feel the same way as O’Riley, considering the outstanding quality of their wines in 2021 despite the extremely difficult grape-growing conditions, which had just about the same problems as New Zealand's 2022 – the most serious being a general lack of sunshine.

Yet, the top names are delivering quality reds in the 94- to 96-point range on a regular basis, judging from our tastings of over 1,000 wines from the vintage. Plus, whites – most dry and sweet – can be exceptional. Bordeaux wines in this week’s report, such as Enclos Tourmaline, Peby Faugeres and Troplong Mondot, are excellent examples, as is the second white of Domaine de Chevalier, L'Esprit de Chevalier.

THE ESSENCE OF HUNGARY

In Hong Kong, Associate Editor Andrii Stetsiuk had an exclusive vertical tasting of the various cuvees of Hungarian winery Disznoko Tokaji via a Zoom call with Disznoko winemaker Laszlo Meszaros. The lineup of more than 30 wines highlighted the diversity of their offerings, but the standouts were from Disznoko's Eszencia bottlings, which we tasted back to 2009.

This is a unique, rare and pure wine with extreme concentrations of sugar and acidity, made with almost no intervention and reaching only between 1.5 percent to 4 percent alcohol. The wine perfectly captures the growing conditions of each vintage, acting as a time capsule. Tasting it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“There is no vinification for Eszencia. It's not something that we ‘make' – it is given,” Meszaros told Andrii. “We have the aszu berries, put them in the containers, and then obtain the essence. The only thing we do is put them in demijohns [glass containers] and forget them for a couple of years. Sometimes they ferment a little bit, sometimes not too much, sometimes just on the surface. After two or three years, they will have around 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent or 4 percent alcohol. So there is no intervention.”

When the final blend is made, only the best of this “essence” wine is bottled. But the challenging part is the bottling process itself, because filtering is very complicated.

“We have to filter it several times,” Meszaros said. “Sometimes, we also remove some sugar because it crystallizes in the demijohns. And then we bottle it. Sometimes it's just 300 bottles, other times it's 1,000 bottles of 375 milliliters.

“But what we expect from an Eszencia – we don't expect anything,” he continued. “We just expect that they will be very connected to their vintages. This is something that we just taste. We serve it in a small spoon, like a crystal angel spoon. And what you need from Eszencia is just a sip, just a taste.”

Try the 2013 Eszencia to see what an extraordinary wine this can be. There are no extreme edges in it, and it's beautiful and delicate, combining aromas from all spectrums, including dried stone and tropical fruit, floral fragrance, notes of oolong tea, bergamot, cardamom and turmeric. It has excellent balance and incredible drinkability with beautiful acidity, and comes with just 3 percent alcohol.

KING OF THE CASTELLBERG

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted some remarkable wines from less well-known producers in southern Baden, the heartland of Germany for the Burgundian grapes. Like most other places in Western Europe, 2021 was a difficult growing season with a string of challenges in the vineyard, but Martin Wassmer made a trio of stunning wines from the Castellberg site.

The Martin Wassmer Chardonnay Dottinger Castellberg GC 2021 was the most remarkable of them. The pronounced acidity typical of the vintage is a very positive feature of the wine, giving it great brilliance and vitality to balance the excellent concentration and chalky minerality. In addition, the price of the wine is modest compared with those from the grape’s Burgundian homeland! Many of the same qualities are shared by the Martin Wassmer Weissburgunder Baden Dottinger Castellberg GC 2021, a dry pinot blanc with a haunting nose of smoke and bergamot, great lees complexity and a very stony finish.

Martin Wassmer’s other business is growing asparagus and strawberries, but those fields didn’t distract him from his pinot noir vineyards in 2021, as the Martin Wassmer Pinot Noir Baden Dottinger Castellberg GC 2021 shows. With its deep nose of cassis and wild blackberry, plus notes of roasted meat and rosemary, this concentrated and compact red has great energy and drive.

Even newer on the scene is the southern Baden winemaker Johannes Landerer. Stuart was impressed with all the wines Landerer sent him to taste, but the Landerer Spätburgunder Baden Eichberg 2022 is a standout pinot noir. The stunning nose of sour cherries and violets with discreet vanilla oak leads into a very sensual palate with tannins that are wonderfully silky in spite of the wine’s youth. The very long finish is pure and precise. This was Stuart’s first taste of bottled German pinot noir from the 2022, and it strongly suggests that this will turn out to be an excellent vintage.

LARGER THAN LIFE IN MCLAREN VALE

 In McLaren Vale, Australia, Senior Editor Ned Goodwin MW tasted with Brad Hickey, who crafts wine under the Brash Higgins banner. Hickey had once been a contemporary of Ned’s in New York City, where they commandeered wine lists for the city’s Masters of the Universe – Hickey at Bouley and Ned at Veritas. “Surely we met, I tell myself,” Ned said, “although neither of us recall – an indictment of age as much as too much wine!

“Hickey is a warm, garrulous figure,” Ned continued. “Literally and metaphorically, he is larger than life. A brick with eyes. Yet his wines take a different tack that can only be described as an understated refinement, founded on textural incisiveness over obvious fruit. His approach is reflective, perhaps, of a kernel of restraint well hidden behind his effusive persona.

“Hickey’s choice of cultivars is righteous. They are meant to be on the land here. From cinsault, mataro and zibbibo, their confluence with site manifests as eminently drinkable wines across the range. His blends are uncanny, at times, yet once in the bottle they all make sense. Take the Brash Higgins Riesling Semillon McLaren Vale RSM Saddlebags Hill Vineyard 2022, for example. It is an ersatz field blend given that both varieties are planted alongside each other and co-fermented in used barriques, attesting to the cliche that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.”

Ned described the cuvee as “among the more intriguing white wines of Australia and almost subliminal in terms of refinement,” by which he means that while the wine is dangerously easy to drink, “one is left with the impression of precision, depth and a chameleonic complexity that belies the gulpability. Awash with accents of rooibos, lime slushy and preserved lemon, this ingenious wine’s structural tension is delivered with a judicious degree of skin contact, as with a number of wines at the address.”

“While McLaren Vale is renowned for a style of grenache that delivers a pinot-like levity, with the warmth of the Mediterranean, we shouldn’t forget just how good the cabernet can be,” Ned added. “The very best wines are truly inimitable, with riffs on salt bush and kelp, salty and laden with iodine. The Brash Higgins Cabernet Sauvignon McLaren Vale CBSV Omensetter Vineyard 2021 is among them. It rides a prodigious licorice strap finale to the effect of a powerful wine that is moreish and nourishing.”

– James Suckling, Andrii Stetsiuk, Stuart Pigott and Ned Goodwin MW 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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