September was a colossal tasting month at JamesSuckling.com. We rated an even 3,600 wines from 19 countries as we march toward rating well over 35,000 bottles for the year. There was plenty of quality, too, with 13 100- or 99-point wines on our list and 415 offerings that received scores of 95 points or higher. Italy was at the top of our tasting charts, contributing 1,292 wines, followed by Austria with 679 wines, the U.S. with 417, Australia with 315, Germany with 307 and Spain with 268.
It was Austria, though, that delivered seven of our 13 top-scoring wines. Senior Editor Stuart Pigott and Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt were in the country to taste dry whites from the recently bottled 2022 vintage, but it was 2021 where we found perfection in the form of the F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Unendlich 2021 and F.X. Pichler Grüner Veltliner Wachau Unendlich 2021. These two standouts were “enormously concentrated but impeccably balanced wines that exemplify all the qualities that make Austrian dry white wines special,” Stuart said.
The 2022 vintage was more challenging than 2021 due to the way the hot and dry early summer was followed by heavy rains in August, and the dry whites from that year have a pronounced acidity, and when the wines had enough ripeness and depth there was wonderful brilliance, as happened with the Franz Hirtzberger Riesling Wachau Ried Singerriedel Smaragd 2022 – “a really great example of a wine marrying the whiplash acidity of the vintage with mandarin orange, mango and persimmon fruit,” according to Stuart.