Rheingau’s Riesling Rhapsody, Kiwi Collectibles and an Italian Triumvirate: Weekly Tasting Report (July 3-9)

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott started his annual deep dive into the wines of Germany with the nation’s most famous wine region, the Rheingau. James and Stuart first met in the Rheingau back in the mid-1980s when the region was not in good shape, with many of its most famous producers resting on their laurels. Some famous names, like Schloss Schonborn, have closed up shop since then and a lot of vineyards have changed hands. The Rheingau has been struggling up a long learning curve since the late 1990s but has finally made it back to the top.

The first piece of evidence to support this statement are four perfect wines, two each from leading producers who could not be more different.

Nobody in the Rheingau or Germany is more famous than the legendary estate of Schloss Johannisberg, helmed by estate director Stefan Doktor. Back in 1818, the German writer Goethe described it as “throning above the region.” That fits, because the Baroque castle of Schloss Johannisberg not only sits on a hilltop overlooking the region’s vineyards and the Rhine river, but two centuries ago the winery was already at the top of the riesling game. In fact, it invented that game between 1720 and 1800.

One of the great masterpieces Stuart tasted was in the nobly sweet style with which the estate made its reputation, the Schloss Johannisberg Riesling Rheingau Blaulack Trockenbeerenauslese 2023. It has all the lusciously honeyed concentration that we expect from Germany’s highest category of botrytis wines, but also an electric acidity that makes the gigantic finish so fresh and pure your mind struggles to make sense of it.

The other truly breathtaking wine is a rather new creation, a dry riesling called Goldlack that's matured in neutral oak casks for two and a half years, the last year of which it spends in the deepest and coldest section of the winery’s ancient cellar. The Schloss Johannisberg Riesling Rheingau Goldlack Trocken 2021 is like meeting the spirit of mineral dry riesling, the stony character washing over you like a great wave. Clearly, the very extended barrel-aging has helped give this a harmony that's absolutely extraordinary for this high-acidity vintage.

Scroll down and you will see that Schloss Johannsiberg's new and forthcoming releases offer an embarrassment of riches. The estate is now back where it was with the 1971 vintage – at the very pinnacle of German white wine. The difference is that back then the greatness was all within the fields of off-dry and nobly sweet riesling, whereas today it extends to equally impressive dry wines. Even the entry-level wines are excellent!

There could hardly be a greater contrast to all this history and tradition than Eva Fricke, who founded her garage winery in 2006 with just 0.1 hectare of vineyards in Lorch at the western tip of the Rheingau. She now has 18 hectares of vineyards, the focus still on Lorch, which Stuart describes as the lost world of Rheingau riesling thanks to these steep vineyards with stony soils remaining stubbornly under the radar. Today, the Eva Fricke winery is housed in an extremely modern light industrial unit on the edge of the Rheingau town of Eltville.

The properly dry Eva Fricke Riesling Rheingau Krone Trocken 2023 has a mind-bending concentration of yellow peach and Amalfi lemon character with a mineral freshness that’s like the beam of a lighthouse shining to the horizon. At the other end of the sweetness spectrum there is the equally astonishing Eva Fricke Riesling Rheingau Schlossberg Trockenbeerenauslese 2023. Yes, this is a luscious, nobly sweet wine, but it is also incredibly compact and focused with gigantic energy and acidity. It should live for many decades, if you can resist it during the next few years. Production was extremely limited.

Stuart was also very impressed with the wines Eva Fricke will release from later this year under the name “Eltville Collection.” They come from a very old vineyard close to the Eva Fricke winery that used to belong to the legendary Schloss Eltz estate. It wound up operations just before James and Stuart first met, but collectors still hunt down the Schloss Eltz wines on the secondary market. On the basis of these first wines, they may well do the same for the Eltville Collection in the future.

Eva Fricke used to be the winemaker at the Leitz winery in Rudesheim, where the young Antonius Leitz is taking over this responsibility under the guidance of his father, Johannes. Here, too, 2023 is an excellent vintage, although the new releases of single-vineyard dry riesling GGs are from the 2022 vintage. They’re an excellent group, with Stuart marginally preferring the Leitz Riesling Rheingau Berg Kaisersteinfels GG 2022 and its incredible nose of spring blossoms with stacks of candied citrus aromas. It is very compact, cool and refined.

The Leitz winery also has a track record with nobly sweet wines, and the Leitz Riesling Rheingau Berg Rottland Trockenbeerenauslese 2022 is enormously dense and packed with stone fruit character, but it also has fantastic elegance. The oyster shell note at the finish really makes this stand out from the crowd.

Back in the 1980s, one of the big players was the house of Deinhard, with its Wegeler-Deinhard estate wineries in the Rheingau and Mosel. They are now both called Wegeler and are under new ownership and direction. The changes haven’t been dramatic, but director Richard Grosche with winemakers Michael Burgdorf (Rheingau) and Norbert Breit (Mosel) have turned this double winery into one of the most reliable producers of dry and off-dry riesling in the country.

At the top of the Wegeler range of dry wines is the magnificent Wegeler Riesling Rheingau Rothenberg GG 2022, which is as concentrated as it is aromatically subtle, with striking aromas of dried flowers and candied orange. This is due for release in September, but it’s one for the long-term.

COLLECTIBLE KIWI FAVORITES

In between pruning his pinot noir vines a few weeks ago in Martinborough, New Zealand, James rated almost 100 wines from the island nation that are currently on the market or soon to be released. Some of the bottles are highly collectible, such as chardonnays from Kumeu River and pinot noirs from Ata Rangi, Burn Cottage, Kusuda, Prophet's Rock and Rippon, not to mention wines from Kiwi favorites such as Neudorf and Wild Estate. There’s even a crazy elixir-of-a-sweet wine from Schubert in Wairarapa.

The top reds were mostly from the excellent 2021 vintage, which produced so many fresh and well-structured pinot noirs and syrahs throughout the key growing regions. As James has written in the past, many people are finding the 2021 vintage equally persuasive in quality following the hotter and more highly touted 2020. 2022 is generally not at the same level wherever you go but there are some excellent wines.

James was impressed with Kumeu River's white wines from the 2023 vintage, which was one of the most difficult in the memory with so much rain on the North Island. “It was really wet but we did well,” said Milan Brajkovich, whose family owns around 14 hectares about 45 minutes from Auckland by car. James and Marie visited the property before flying down to Martinborough. “It was a small harvest, and it was a lot of selection," Brajkovich said. "It was no fun. It was the biggest harvesting team we ever had."

The wines are very energetic with intense acidity buttressing the vivid fruit. The steel and floral undertones are most impressive in the single-vineyard wine from Mate's Vineyard, which led all their bottlings.

ITALIAN TRIUMVIRATE

The combination of Brunello 2019s, Barolo 2020s and Super Tuscan 2021s that Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli tasted over the past week was a fortunate and almost unexpected coincidence. The 2019 vintage in Italy was regular and balanced, tending to be more elegant than powerful but also structured. In contrast, the 2020 vintage was rounder, producing more approachable wines that are nonetheless rich and detailed. The 2021 vintage represents almost a mix between the two, presenting a structure for great aging like the best of 2019, but with much flesh on the bones like the average 2020.

The standout from all three categories was the Cepparello 2021, a 100 percent sangiovese Super Tuscan from Isole e Olena, a winery in the heart of Chianti Classico that sits at around 400 meters elevation. In 2022, the estate was acquired by the Epi group, which had previously taken ownership of Biondi Santi. The 2021 was harvested by Paolo de Marchi and bottled by the new ownership. For finesse and aging potential, it may be one of the best Cepparellos ever.

The journey through Barolo with the wines of Arnaldo Rivera is always stimulating, Aldo said. This is the most sought-after brand of the Terre del Barolo cooperative, encompassing the best crus of Barolo. Cannubi and Vignarionda are the best expressions, defined on one hand by fragrance and finesse, and on the other by power and grace.

Montalcino winery Villa Le Prata was delayed in presenting its 2019 wines because of a stylistic change at the winery, with the new generation of ownership approaching their wines in a very traditional way. The vineyards are in the area that descends from Montalcino toward Tavernelle, which is still high up and with great temperature variation. The phenolic maturity of the tannins and the aromas of the 2019 wines are of notable quality. It is a winery that will be talked about in the future.

Another winery that recently changed hands, Galardi, makes one of the best reds in all of southern Italy, according to Aldo. Their flagship Terra di Lavoro manages to combine the power of the aglianico grape with aromas of graphite, dark chocolate and bramble fruit. It’s a very Mediterranean wine – dark and rich and meant for long aging.

Wines from the northernmost Italian wine region of Trentino-Alto Adige, set amid the Dolomite mountains, stood out in our Hong Kong office tastings this week. Of particular note are the fragrant and enticing offerings of Elena Walch, a family-run estate that bottled a range of expressive single-varietal wines. These include a sophisticated, long and creamy chardonnay (the Vigna Castel Ringberg Riserva 2021), a silky and floral gewurztraminer (the Vigna Kastelaz 2022), and a chalky, mineral pinot bianco (the Kristallberg 2022), as well as a seductively earthy pinot noir and a supple lagrein.

However, it was Elena Walch’s Beyond the Clouds 2021 that Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt liked the most. It’s a blend of mostly chardonnay with a selection of other white grapes that are all pressed and fermented together in new French oak barrels, giving a wonderfully aromatic, full-bodied yet fresh wine that has flinty and spicy undertones to the citrus, stone and tropical fruit.

Another standout Alto Adige white was Pfitscher’s Mathias Kathreinerfelder Riserva 2022. This is a serious expression of sauvignon blanc that has a complex interplay of green fruit (think guava, lime and fennel), minerals and spices like aniseed.

We also tasted a range of sparkling wines from English winery Sugrue South Downs, whose vineyards across Sussex are mostly planted on chalky soils – a characteristic of the South Downs that is similar to the chalky soils in Champagne. Winemaker Dermot Sugrue believes this is essential to the finesse and minerality in their chardonnay-based sparkling wines, as he told Claire via Zoom.

– Stuart Pigott, James Suckling, Aldo Fiordelli and Claire Nesbitt 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.