Peter Michael’s 2023 Gems, Mosel Riesling Perfection and Elevated Chinese Chardonnays

Remarkable Sonoma County chardonnay and pinot noir wines overflowed during our past week of tastings, with Executive Editor Jim Gordon uncovering two perfect-scoring bottles and a slew of other terrific offerings.

The Peter Michael Winery in Sonoma’s Knights Valley appellation gave us both of the perfect scorers, with each from the cool and long 2023 growing season. Jim tasted the Peter Michael 2023s and 2022s with winemaker Robert Fiore at the remote winery, which is situated at the base of Mount St. Helena. Here, vineyards stretch up dramatically from about 1,000 feet elevation to 2,000 feet, overlooking the Knights Valley floor.

The Peter Michael Winery Chardonnay Sonoma County Knights Valley Belle-Cote 2023 is super vibrant, energized and tangy, with vital acidity supporting luscious ripe pear and apple flavors on a silky texture. It is seamless, long on the finish and balanced for further aging. Its greatness is matched by a magnificent red grown 40 miles to the west on the cool Pacific coast of Sonoma County. The Peter Michael Winery Pinot Noir Sonoma County Fort Ross-Seaview Ma Danseuse 2023 is dark, powerful, full-bodied, packed with black tea, bay leaf and dark cherries yet structured and appetizing, built for medium-term aging.

“2023 had generous rain in the spring, so lots of water in the soil, and cooler weather that continued for much of the summer,” Fiore said. “The vines were able to keep the natural acidity in the grapes, and you could taste it in the juice at harvest. There is great vibrancy and acidity in the wines.”

Peter Michael’s vineyard manager, Javier Avina, said their last chardonnay grapes for the 2023 vintage were harvested on Nov. 2 – the latest he had seen in 30-plus years. It was a similarly late but unspoiled harvest in their Sonoma Coast vines, with the final blocks of pinot noir coming in on Oct. 25 instead of the normal third week of September.

There is so much good to say about the 2023 vintage that it’s easy to miss what was good about 2022. Our scores for Peter Michael’s 2022s are just a few points behind the 2023s. Fiore said they only managed to get half their normal crop on the Sonoma Coast, “but otherwise a fantastic vintage.”

He said the notorious heat dome in early September 2022, rather than being a disaster, helped ripen the crop well. You’ll see in the tasting notes below a lot of good news from both vintages for chardonnay and pinot noir.

Mosel Riesling Perfection

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott got to know the beautiful narrow and steep sided Mosel Valley inside out when he lived there at the very end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, and since that time the wine quality has kept on improving amid a major stylistic shift.

Back then, Ernst Loosen of the Dr. Loosen winery in Bernkastel was just starting out, and right from the beginning he was fascinated by the challenge of making great dry white wines in a region best known for off-dry and nobly sweet wines.

With the Dr. Loosen Riesling Mosel Erdener Prälat GG Réserve 2019, he has finally scaled the pinnacle of dry white perfection. The wines of the GG Reserve category at Dr. Loosen all spend two full years on the lees, in this case in a well-used 3,000 liter cask, followed by four years of further maturation in bottle. The result is a hypnotic giant of exotic fascination with unstoppable stony minerality and a hint of the bitter almond flavor that’s characteristic for the site.

This wine and Loosen’s two other newly released GG Reserves are spectacular expressions of the great 2019 vintage, and they are also the first dry wines Loosen has bottled unfiltered. The trio are all amazing wines, with decades of aging potential! 5,000 bottles of each were produced.

Loosen also supplied Stuart with a daringly original analysis of the 2024 vintage. This cool and moist year (in the new climatic context) gave wines that reminded Stuart of the good vintages of the 1980s and early 1990s due to in their sleekness and crispness.

“I looked back in our records and discovered that the sugar ripeness of the 2024s was almost identical to those of the 1975 vintage,“ Loosen said, “but the acidity is consistently one gram per liter higher, which is a significant difference.”

Stuart was delighted by the delicacy and stunned by the structure of the row of traditional style off-dry riesling Kabinett, Spatlese and Auslese from the 2024 vintage that Loosen showed him. Stuart’s favorite was the Dr. Loosen Riesling Mosel Erdener Treppchen Spätlese 2024, which has dense salty minerality in spite of its lightness of body. This is a striking feature of many of the best Mosel wines of the 2024 vintage.

Stuart found off-the-scale minerality in the perfect Günther Steinmetz Riesling Mosel Piesporter Treppchen V.d.T. 2024, which is awesomely concentrated and hyper-precise. With just under a thousand bottles produced from a single plot of almost 100-year-old vines, this will be difficult to track down. However, winemaker Stefan Steinmetz produced a slew of other stunning dry rieslings in the 2024 vintage. In fact, for Stuart so far this was the most impressive range of 2024s in the region.

Steinmetz is also a master of the riesling Kabinett style and he produced half a dozen stunning examples of this style in the 2024 vintage, of which the Günther Steinmetz Riesling Mosel Wintricher Geierslay Kabinett 2024 has breathtaking mirabelle plum and Amalfi lemon flavors and dazzling salty acidity, yet is super-refined.

For Katharina Prum of the legendary Joh. Jos. Prum winery in Wehlen, 2024 is another excellent vintage and J.J. fans (as they often refer to themselves) should be delighted by the racy, wonderful filigreed and expressively aromatic personality of these wines.

Usually the most remarkable wines here are in the nobly sweet Auslese Gold Cap category, and there are three of these beauties from the 2024 vintage.

However, Stuart was even more impressed by the limited production Joh. Jos. Prum Riesling Mosel Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese (Auction Wine) 2024, which is very cool with great tension between the salty acidity and white peach and lime flavors. Stuart barely thought about sweetness when tasting the wine, thanks to its enormous freshness and drive.

In Germany, some critics are dismissing the 2024 vintage and accusing fingers have been pointed in the direction of the Mosel.

Stuart agrees that the vintage lacks the homogeneity of the excellent 2023 vintage, but suggests that if you read the notes below you will find plenty of excellence and – in small quantities – greatness, too.

Grace and Power from Tuscany

Three small subregions are emerging most vividly from the latest tastings in Tuscany, and they happen to be among the coolest names in Italian wine right now: Bolgheri, Panzano in Chianti and Valdarno.

What they share is a rare ability to fuse grace and power. These are wines built on body and fruit, consistently backed by serious structure and almost never lacking in complexity. Each area is a layered patchwork of soils, climates and grape varieties.

In Bolgheri, one trend stands out with clarity: the growing devotion to cabernet franc, which now excels not only in blends but increasingly on its own. Even if the denomination’s highest peaks still belong to blends, the cabernet franc wave shows no sign of slowing.

The Castello di Bolgheri Bolgheri Superiore Barinca 2021, which is making its debut on the market, is already a flagship for one of the appellation’s largest estates. It shows a classy nose of eucalyptus, restrained cassis, macerated violets, earthy minerality and balsamic nuances. The tannins are elegant on a creamy, silky palate, with fresh acidity and a super-polished finish. Alcohol is well balanced despite the wine’s power and full body.

Valdarno continues to shine thanks to Luca Sanjust’s postmodern revolution at Petrolo. His Petrolo Sangiovese Valdarno di Sopra Vigna Bòggina A 2023 – the “A” stands for amphora – is bright with fresh aromas of strawberries and flowers and a hint of terra cotta. This bright and focused wine shows a medium body with refined tannins, a fruity finish of crushed stone and graphite – all subtle and creamy.

More classic, and in the in Super Tuscan style, is the Tenuta Sette Ponti Merlot Toscana Sette 2022, with its aromas of white truffles, chocolate, fresh herbs, blackberries and a touch of basil. Medium-bodied, with ultra-fine tannins that give it structure and a light chewiness. “Pure merlot,” James said of it.

Then comes Panzano in Chianti Classico, a hamlet of Greve with a fierce identity and cradle of both some of the finest Gallo Nero and notable Super Tuscans. The Giorgio Primo Toscana 2021 from Tenuta La Massa – a wine that has earned top scores in the past and shown striking longevity – reveals elegance and complexity in sleek aromas of milk chocolate, black cherries, bramble fruit, incense, cocoa powder and restrained flowers. It’s a full-bodied wine, with rare density and velvety tannins carried by long, refreshing acidity.

From the same area, the Colli della Toscana Centrale Petresco 2021 by Le Cinciole may be less known but is no less compelling. It’s a restrained, complex wine with rare depth and vibrancy alongside aromas of red and black cherries, liquorice, cocoa powder and Earl Grey tea, accented by pepper and ash. On the palate, fruit sweetness combines with crisp acidity, a tight-knit structure and firm, sleek tannins. Certified organic, it is already approachable but will show its best in years to come.

Elevated Chinese Chardonnays

Finally, Senior Editor Zekun Shuai found three outstanding chardonnays from China, each hailing from distinct regions: Yunnan, Ningxia and Xinjiang. The pure, acid-driven Clos Mao Shangri-La Light 茂园理光干白 2023 is one of the most austere chardonnays that Zekun has tasted this year, originating from vines of 15 to 20 years of age from China’s southwest region – Yunnan’s Shangri-la, an area famed for its high-altitude vineyards, which range from 2,000 to 2,900 meters and yield some of the most premium red and white wines found in China.

The striking, extreme terroirs and the success of cabernet sauvignon blends have put Shangri-la on the map, but the emergence of high-scoring chardonnays from producers like Xiaoling, Mingyi, Muxin, LVMH Ao Yun and Shangri-La Winery signal a promising trend for premium whites. The epicenter of this trend is Jiangpo village, whose six hectares of chardonnay are perched at elevations starting at 2,700 meters in one of northernmost points within Deqin county.

Mao Xiao, the owner and winemaker for Clos Mao, is just one of several producers who farm the coveted Jiangpo chardonnay vineyards. Mao produces only about 900 bottles from his 1.5-hectare plot at 2,900 meters elevation, where the schist-rich soils and southeast exposure create a unique terroir giving low yields. His crystalline chardonnay, having undergone malolactic fermentation, still boasts razor-sharp acidity and a minerally texture, showcasing the nervy purity and freshness from the mountainous area. While it’s approachable now, the wine will need some time in the bottle to let the pithy acidity settle.

Moving to Ningxia, the new Legacy Peak Chardonnay Ningxia 留世酒庄遗产峰干白葡萄酒 2022, is only made in magnums and is another noteworthy premium entry for one of the best producers in the region. It offers a well-balanced profile, although it doesn’t quite reach the brightness of its Shangri-La counterpart. Finally, the Tiansai Skyline of Gobi Chardonnay Yanqi Reserve 天塞酒庄珍藏霞多丽 2023 from Xinjiang rounds out the trio. This chardonnay represents good value for money, displaying excellent concentration with fine flinty toast and a long, saline finish.

– Jim Gordon, Stuart Pigott, Aldo Fiordelli and Zekun Shuai contributed reporting.

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by the 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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