Riesling Revelations from the Marcobrunn and West Sonoma Coast Kicks Off: Weekly Tasting Report (Sept 21-27)

Many wine-tasting days are really hard work for the JamesSuckling.com tasters and demand a lot of concentration, but sometimes great revelations occur. For Senior Editor Stuart Pigott, this is exactly what came to pass with a trio of rieslings he tried from the legendary Marcobrunn vineyard site in the Rheingau region of Germany.

“When James Suckling and I started out as wine critics in the 1980s, it was dark days for the Marcobrunn because none of the new wines lived up to the legend,“ Stuart said about the vineyard’s history. “But every now and again somebody would open an old bottle and we’d be wowed. Back then great Marcobrunn wine was like the white whale in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. Some people said it was out there and others said it wasn’t. You know, some wine legends are just wishful thinking."

Then, with von Oetinger's very limited production dry Marcobrunn GG, it looked like the white whale of German wine really was out there. In recent vintages, winemaker Achim von Oetinger in Erbach, the commune to which the Marcobrunn belongs, has made some fantastic wines from this site. We just scored the von Oetinger Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn GG 2021 very highly. Although wine drinkers usually think of riesling as being light and refreshing, a great Marcobrunn, like this one, is very muscular and massively structured.

Stuart also made his annual visit to the Kunstler estate in Hochheim, less than 20 kilometers from his home in the Taunus hill country above the Rheingau and was confronted with a row of recently bottled 2021 vintage wines that included two Marcobrunns.

“I didn’t expect much, because 2021 was winemaker Gunter Kunstler’s first shot at making Marcobrunn, but both wines were totally amazing: deep, dark and mysterious, just like the best Marcorbunns of the past,” Stuart said.

The intensely exotic Künstler Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn Auslese 2021 is a perfect example of this category, with a very exciting interplay of luscious sweetness and vibrant acidity.

Sadly, production was very limited, as it was for the von Oetinger Marcobrunn. However, there are around 10,000 bottles of the powerful and extremely complex Künstler Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn GG 2021, a rare dry masterpiece from this generally challenging vintage.

Just like in Burgundy, land in the most famous sites of the Rheingau rarely changes hands, but recently the Schloss Schonborn estate wound down winemaking operations and leased out its vineyards. Suddenly, Marcobrunn was available and Gunter Kunstler was able to grab two hectares, or five acres.

READ MORE THE GOOD, THE GREAT AND THE UGLY: GERMANY’S SCHIZOPHRENIC 2020 VINTAGE

But Stuart’s story doesn’t end there. When he returned to his house from the Kunstler visit, the 2021s from winemaker Fred Prinz of the Prinz estate in Hallgarten stood at his table. Was this more goodness from Marcobrunn?

“It was really too much to hope that this wine could also be exceptional, but it was and it had a very similar personality to Kunstler’s Marcobrunn GG,“ Stuart said. “It was as if nobody had been making great Chambertin, then suddenly several people did all at once!“

The Prinz Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn GG 2021 is the dark star among Prinz’s 2021 wines, although it was also his first shot at making Marcobrunn.

“One of my colleagues told me that I would need years of practice, because the Marcobrunn is so different, has such a heavy marl soil,“ Fred Prinz told Stuart. “But I replied that we would do everything to make a great wine, and we’re delighted it worked out.“

“The striking thing about these two producers is that they are both relative newcomers and were literally garage wineries in the early,“ Stuart observed. “Gunter Kunstler started making wine at the end of the 1980s and Fred Prinz founded his winery at the beginning of the 1990s. Now both have scaled the very pinnacle of this very conservative region.“

CURTAIN RISES FOR WEST SONOMA COAST WINES

In California, James and Associate Editor Nathan Slone sat down with 12 producers from the West Sonoma Coast Vintners Association to taste and talk through the wines from Sonoma's newest AVA, West Sonoma Coast. They found many excellent chardonnays and pinot noirs from 2019 and 2021, as well as a few from 2020, despite the fires of that year.

The top wines of the tasting both came from Flowers, whose 2021 chardonnay from Camp Meeting Ridge Almar and pinot noir from Sea View Ridge Cielo are both outstanding examples of the quality and purity that the Sonoma Coast is capable of producing. Both are single-vineyard bottlings and showcase the distinctive character and verve of the Sonoma Coast.

“I never worked pinot noir less than in 2021,” Flowers winemaker Chantal Forthun said about how they managed the grape that year. “We embraced more of an infusion technique than extraction.”

That philosophy evidently paid off, with the wines showing plenty of clarity with mineral complexity and transparent red fruit. They were also fresh, bright and complex.

James and Nathan also tasted wines from 2019, which was an outstanding vintage and has continued to show well. The wines remain perfumed and bright, with many showcasing the vintage’s delicacy and floral edge. The best examples are already delicious, and we’re looking forward to their aging potential. Our favorites from 2019 came from 32 Winds, Balletto, Ernest Vineyards, Gros Ventre Cellars, Red Car and Matt Taylor.

James visited another Sonoma producer, Kosta Browne, which showed incredible wines from all over California, including a few outstanding examples from the Russian River Valley from both 2019 and 2020. Their wines are full and expressive with layered complexity that are approachable in their youth but are really meant for the cellar.

Kosta Browne winemaker Julian Howsepian told James that 2021 is another vintage showing potential. “We needed to wait for the acidity to drop in 2021 instead of waiting for brix,” he said. “It was a low-intervention year, and I am very, very optimistic.”

For us, Kosta Browne is always consistent and provides quintessential expressions of the regions they make wine from. We are looking forward to tasting 2021 next year.

– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor; Nathan Slone, Associate Editor

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.