Perfecting the Nahe’s Dry Whites, and Tradition Steps Forward in Rioja: Weekly Tasting Report (July 31-Aug 6)

The heart of Senior Editor Stuart Pigott always beats faster with anticipation when he travels to the valley of the Nahe, one of the Rhine’s most important tributaries. Germany is one of the big winners of global warming, and nowhere has benefited more than this rugged and dramatic valley. And nowhere have winemakers learned more during recent years about how to perfect dry white wine in the new climatic situation than here.

This time, Stuart’s highest hopes were fulfilled by a cornucopia of extraordinary wines, led by some dry rieslings with enormous mineral power and aromatic complexity. As Frank Schonleber of the Emrich-Schonleber winery said to Stuart, “There’s nothing superficial about the 2023 riesling wines, but on the other hand their minerality isn’t dominant.” And Schonleber’s dry and sweet rieslings are wonderful illustrations of how fruit and minerality are beautifully interwoven in the 2023 vintage.

The dry Emrich-Schönleber Riesling Nahe Auf der Lay GG (Auction Wine) 2023 is a perfect expression of this and of the rocky landscape of this beautiful region. It’s also a career high point for its maker. It has a diamond-like brilliance and a samurai sword-like sharpness plus an essence of Amalfi lemon at the endless finish.

However, there were other 2023 wines besides this limited-production, single-vineyard offering that were equally impressive. For example, on paper the Gut Hermannsberg Riesling Nahe 7 Terroirs Trocken 2023 is an entry-level wine, but it has generous stone fruit and citrus aromas with a note of smoked bacon and wet stone freshness. Yes, this producer’s GGs were also very impressive (note that the current vintage for two of these is 2019!) but this cuvee of wine, from young vines in all seven of this producer’s GG sites, exceeds the bounds of its humble category by a mile! 2023 is clearly the best vintage since the Reidel family took over ownership of this winery in 2009.

Another great buy is the Hees Riesling Nahe Auener Höhe Trocken 2023, a village-level wine with totally original aromas of pineapple chutney, flint, lees and crushed stone. It’s appropriate that this wine should be a walk on the wild side, because Marcus Hees’s winery lies in remote Auen, a corner of the region that Stuart regards as a lost world of riesling.

That was very much how the wine world saw Bockenau, where the Schafer-Frohlich winery is based, when they started to attract attention more than 20 years ago. Since then, winemaker Tim Frohlich has acquired a portfolio of top sites that enabled him to produce a collection of GG and GG-like wines in 2023 that bowled Stuart over.

At the pinnacle stands the Schäfer-Fröhlich Riesling Nahe Final (Auction Wine) 2023, which is an entire microcosmos of spice, smoke, flint and mint aromas. Very compact and concentrated, it comes from the oldest vines in the Felseneck site of Bockenau.

At the Donnhoff winery in the sleepy village of Oberhausen, Cornelius Donnhoff has been making extraordinary wines for many years (he took over from his father with the 2007 vintage), but with the 2023  vintage he really hit the bullseye. His mind-blowing range of dry rieslings is crowned by two perfect wines that are dramatically contrasting. 100 points is not a taste you can describe in one or two sentences; rather, it has many faces.

The Dönnhoff Riesling Nahe Dellchen GG 2023 has a hypnotic beauty and redefines what peachy means in the riesling context. As it aerates, a wealth of wild berry and flower nuances emerge. The enormous concentration is married to a no-less-staggering freshness and precision.

In contrast, the Dönnhoff Riesling Nahe Hermannshöhle GG 2023 has Grand Canyon-like depth and layers plus a horizon-to-horizon spectrum of stone fruit, citrus and wild berry notes. It builds and builds to a giant crescendo at the finish. Both these wines are medium-bodied with under 13 percent alcohol!

And the naturally sweet rieslings from Donnhoff are every bit as stunning. But at the top, the Dönnhoff Riesling Nahe Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Spätlese 2023 is packed to the brim with stone and exotic fruit aromas, and it has a radical stony minerality and raciness.

Stuart feels that while he has encountered many stunning Nahe wines over the past few years, he has never before come across a vintage with such an abundance of beauty as 2023. For producers as different as Andi Schneider of K.H. Schneider in Bad Sobernheim and Martin and Johannes Tesch of the Tesch winery in Langenlonsheim, these are the best wines ever. And the 2023 vintage in the Nahe offers excellent quality and great originality at every price point. For these reasons, he will return to report on additional producers during the coming weeks.

TRADITION RULES IN RIOJA

Senior Editor Zekun Shuai landed in Spain over the past week, where he kicked off his Rioja visits and tastings. His first stop was the town of Haro, home to some of the most noteworthy Rioja “houses” – each with its own distinct identity and style, in the manner of Champagne.

The highlight, however, was Haro’s most steadfast, traditional producer, Lopez de Heredia, which also gave us the most memorable wines of the week. Zekun described their reds as “Brunello/Barolo-like Riojas,” always exhibiting a delicious austerity from zesty acidity, complexity and mouthwatering savoriness – sometimes much more Italian than Spanish in profile.

But it's their white Gran Reserva from the excellent 2004 vintage that Zekun said was one of the most impressive wines he has tasted from Rioja, if not all of Spain. It is a truly vinous, deep and unique wine, reticent yet so powerful and restrained, with notes of waxed lemons, white macadamia nuts, saffron, sweet potato and subtle smokiness, and it’s likely to develop notes like white truffle in the long future to come. It was aged for 10 years in old American oak in the damp cellar of Lopez de Heredia before bottling.

Lopez de Heredia only declares Gran Reserva vintages selectively, and the last time it happened was for  the 2001 vintage, for both their Viña Bosconia and Viña Tondonia bottlings. According to Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia, the next releases are expected to be from 2005, 2007 and 2010, and it may also happen for 2011. The potentially excellent 2016 and 2021 vintages are also likely to join Lopez de Heredia’s Gran Reserva family, but that is much further down the road.

OPTIMAL REFINEMENT 

On the road in Northern California this week, our tasting team there uncovered a few standouts in both Carneros and Sonoma, in particular from the Knights Valley AVA. They encountered an especially classy lineup at Ram's Gate in Carneros, whose team, led by head winemaker Joe Nielsen, has been dialing in optimal refinement in its chardonnays, pinot noirs and syrahs.

Of particular note was the Ram's Gate Chardonnay Napa Valley Carneros Hyde Vineyard 2021, which was made with restraint and focus, offering a mineral and flint-driven interpretation with the more common characters of underlying power and finesse left to unwind in the years to come.

While Hyde Vineyard is more commonly known for chardonnay, the Ram's Gate Syrah Carneros Hyde Vineyard 2021 was made from a north-facing, two-acre pocket of the vineyard and fermented using 100 percent whole clusters, resulting in a deeply perfumed and lifted aromatic profile supported with a full bodied, structured and refined palate.

READ MORE NAPA VALLEY CABS SHINE IN 2021: APEX VINTAGE IN A ‘REDEMPTION’ YEAR

Finesse and restraint could also be found in the latest offerings of Knights Bridge Winery, in the Knights Valley AVA of Sonoma County.  Head winemaker Derek Baljeu presides over a brand-new winery and cave system, allowing him to focus in on his organically farmed vineyards and harvest separately according to the different soil profiles found in the vineyard.

This was represented by two standout wines. The first, the Knights Bridge Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Cristobel 2021, is from 100 percent old-vine hillside cabernet sauvignon grown on white, ash-rich soil from Mount Saint Helena. The second, the Knights Bridge Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Linville 2021, is a fleshier wine, with a deep yet elegant nose and dense notes of blood plums, espresso, chocolate and cigar, as well as a full-bodied palate and bright acidity.

– Stuart Pigott, Zekun Shuai and Ryan Montgomery 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.