Pennsylvania’s Surprising Rieslings, an Austrian Love Story and Vibrancy from Bordeaux: Weekly Tasting Report (Dec 27-Jan 2)

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted a very diverse range of wines over the past week as we said goodbye to 2023, with the Galen Glen Riesling Lehigh Valley Stone Cellar 2022 standing out  as the best white wine he has ever tasted from Pennsylvania. It’s a beautifully expressive dry riesling with the kind of aromatic intensity and mineral freshness we expect from the cooler regions of Germany, and it maintains its dazzling brilliance and spot-on balance through the delicate, long finish.

The barely off-dry Galen Glen Riesling Lehigh Valley Fossil Vineyard 2022 was almost as impressive – slightly juicier with a long, wet stone finish. It’s from the hilly and sometimes rocky northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, where the bedrock is mainly shale. Yes, the soil of the latter vineyard is rich in fossils, so the acidity of these wines is less strident than comparable wines from the Finger Lakes region of New York, which is the East Coast homeland of the riesling grape.

The same winery also came up with a very distinctive cool-climate red, the amusingly named Galen Glen Lehigh Valley Red German Bastards 2022. It features a complex interplay of wild berry and dry forest floor aromas, the fine tannins neatly interlocking with the generous fruit on the medium-bodied palate. The long, silky finish has surprising power, but no force. Behind this unique flavor profile is a 50-50 blend of the German cabernet dorsa grape and the Austrian zweigelt grape. We congratulate winemaker Sarah Troxell on getting that name approved in the U.S. Clearly her talents are not limited to the wine cellar!

Stuart also tasted the latest offerings of Pia Strehn, who is from the Burgenland region of Austria and whom Stuart first met in New York City when he lived there a decade ago, when Strehn was focused on reds. They were good, but since then she has switched her focus to rosés and something really happened. The samples she recently sent to Stuart knocked him off his tasting-room chair. Austria produces a fair amount of rosé, but little of that wine leaves the country and only the sparkling rosé from Brundlmayer in the Kamptal region has an international reputation of any kind. That is surely about to change with Strehn’s wines.

The most remarkable of them was the very limited production Strehn Austria Love Story 2021, which has a wonderful cool elegance and excellent concentration for the category. Fine tannins support the very long and intense mineral finish. Almost as impressive and produced in a larger quantity was the Strehn Austria Der Elefant im Prozellanladen 2022, which Stuart said is the best dry rosé he has ever encountered from the blaufrankisch grape (the second most widely planted red grape in Austria behind zweigelt).

The cherry character is deep and subtle, with restrained tannins and elegant acidity driving the complex finish that pulls you back for more of this beauty. By the way, the name literally translated means “the elephant in a porcelain store” – the German take on “bull in a china shop.”

Four bottles rose to the top during our tastings this past week of Bordeaux’s challenging 2021 vintage, where vibrancy, fluidity and refinement tend to prevail over density, structure and opulence. The Château Lascombes Margaux 2021 stood out as an ambitious contender, displaying more extraction, tautness and angularity than many of its counterparts. It maintains a nice balance and avoids the excesses of extraction in a lighter vintage characterized by crunchy, succulent fruit and a generally more fluid and crisper mouthfeel.

From Pauillac, the Château Pédesclaux Pauillac 2021 is a great reflection of the vintage, showing refinement and sleek tannins, as well as offering a touch more fruit flesh than power. Like many wines from 2021, it also achieves a beautiful equilibrium, exemplifying its early appeal.

From Bordeaux’s Left Bank, the Château Phélan Ségur St.-Estèphe 2021 emerges as another overachiever in this vintage, imparting a mineral quality to a refined, more complex delivery that taps into a lighter, crunchier yet arguably more classic and old-time Bordeaux style, with much lower alcohol content.

The Clos Dubreuil St.-Emilion 2021 presents itself as a modern yet eclectic Bordeaux, showcasing polished tannins, restrained plushness and cedary undertone derived from the sophisticated use of oak, mingling with the juicy fruit before culminating in a prolonged and layered finish.

We would be remiss not to mention an outstanding malbec blend from Argentina we tasted to wrap up our 2023 ratings. The Trapiche Malbec Argentina 140 Años 2017 hails from one of Argentina’s prominent players in the industry, Trapiche, which celebrated its 140-year anniversary last year.

This special edition is a blend of three high-altitude sources: Mendoza, the epicenter of Argentina’s modern wine trade, where Valle de Uco contributes significantly to the country’s finest wines; Valles Calchaquies in Salta; and Valle del Pedernal in San Juan. The wine captivates with its melding of ripeness and freshness. Its brooding core of blue and purple fruits with bright acidity and a mouthful of fine, powdery tannins captures the essence of mountain malbecs from Argentina. Despite being aged in 100 percent new French oak, the wine eschews any oak sweetness, maintaining a spicy yet pristine and floral profile.

SINGULARITY FROM MARGARET RIVER

Margaret River is responsible for a liminal style of chardonnay, as much as an expression of cabernet that is equally Janus-like. These varieties revel in a classical archetype of pungent mineral torque and sinuous, graphite-doused tannins, respectively. Yet there is a certain Aussie flamboyance to the chardonnay, manifest as searingly intense fruit espoused by the dominant Gingin clone.

This is juxtaposed against the moreish bayleaf, sage, marjoram and salty riffs on the Australian bush that often define the cabernet and its many offshoots. This potpourri makes for red wines that are considerably more savory and restrained than their New World counterparts, with an emphasis on structural attributes as much as fruit.

As with any region, there is a firmament of producers in Margaret River, and Cloudburst, a project of Will Berliner, is among them. ”‘Not having come up in wine was entirely to my advantage,” Berliner, an American who is a biologist by training and filmmaker by profession, told Senior Editor Ned Goodwin MW. “I wasn’t beholden to the myriad sacred cows.” His contagious energy transpires as a bonsai-like vineyard of squat, dry-planted vines that have never seen a chemical. They are planted to Burgundian densities, making for a forensic approach to viticulture.

Perhaps this is why the Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River 2021 is so exceptional. 2021 was a celebrated vintage throughout most of Australia – a rare interregional confluence of cool, attenuated growing conditions resulting in optimal fruit ripeness. Yet in Margaret River the vintage was too erratic to facilitate consistency. For those of us who appreciate wine as an aesthetic expression as much as a delicious drink, however, consistency often makes for dull predictability. Mercifully, Cloudburst is Margaret River’s arbiter of excitement. Their Chardonnay Margaret River 2022 is even better!

– Stuart Pigott, Zekun Shuai 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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