The Rheingau Renaissance, Oregon’s 2021 Miracle and a Grenache Rosé Thrills: Weekly Tasting Report (Sept 20-26)

When Senior Editor Stuart Pigott and James Suckling first visited the Rheingau region of Germany more than 40 years ago its once sky-high reputation was already slipping badly. Just under 20 years ago it was overtaken by its larger neighbor, Rheinhessen, sending a shockwave through the Rheingau that you can still feel today.

For Stuart, each tasting of the region’s wines is another chance to assess the progress of the “Rheingau Renaissance.” This week’s tastings suggest the Rheingau is finally pushing its way back toward the top. The most exciting of the dry rieslings – the region’s primary focus – were from two women winemakers, Theresa Breuer and Eva Fricke.

Fricke, who comes from the beer-drinking north of Germany, founded her eponymous winery back in 2006 with vineyards in the commune of Lorch, at the northern tip of the region. “Back then, Lorch was completely forgotten, and it was possible for me to buy and lease vineyards with old riesling vines,” she explained.

The single-vineyard Eva Fricke wines Stuart tasted make it clear that she made an extremely smart bet on Lorch. The intensely flinty and citric Eva Fricke Riesling Rheingau Krone Trocken 2022 is one of the most concentrated dry wines of the vintage in Germany, the wet stone minerality and Amalfi lemon freshness building to a giant crescendo at the mind-bending finish.

It and the more succulent and juicy Eva Fricke Riesling Rheingau Schlossberg 2022, with its cornucopia of peach, nectarine and spring blossom aromas, have both been made for long-aging. In Lorch that means decades!

Even higher-rated than either of these wines is the lusciously sweet Eva Fricke Riesling Rheingau Schlossberg Beerenauslese 2022, a very rare spectacular botrytis wine for the 2022 vintage that has so much floral honey character  you can almost hear the bees buzzing. The wet harvest weather in September and October 2022 mostly prevented Botrytis-affected grapes from shriveling, which put a stop to the production of Auslese, BA and TBA dessert wines.

Theresa Breuer took over the Georg Breuer winery in 2004 after the sudden death of her father, Bernhard, one of the pioneers of the Rheingau Renaissance.

Bernhard Breuer’s top wine was always the dry riesling from the Berg Schlossberg site, and Theresa Breuer’s latest star is the Georg Breuer Riesling Rheingau Berg Schlossberg 2022. Extraordinary concentration is packed into its very sleek frame (with just 11.5 percent alcohol).

Tiny yields helped this and her other great single-vineyard dry rieslings to great aromatic expression. In recent years the price of the Georg Breuer Berg Schlossberg marched steadily up into three-figure territory on the secondary market, then the ex-cellar price moved up to match.

The other focus of Stuart’s tasting was pinot noir, with one example from the Rheingau, the Kaufmann Pinot Noir Rheingau Hassel GG 2020, standing apart. This giant pinot noir is the best Swiss winemaker Urban Kaufmann has ever made and excels because of its enormous structure, not opulence. The aromas of graphite, flint, menthol and licorice plus the velvety mouthfeel and mineral acidity make it a compelling wine.

But it says something about how climate change is transforming the wine world that the 2021 vintage pinot noirs from Brooks in Oregon were even more elegant than this German wine, none more so than the almost perfect Brooks Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Rastaban 2021. It has an incredibly sensual nose of red fruits, spice, savory and mint, and is as sensationally vibrant and precise as it is concentrated. The silky finish just doesn’t want to stop! The grapes came from the Brooks Vineyard immediately below the winery, which is biodynamically cultivated.

In contrast, the dark and dangerous Brooks Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Cahiers 2021 is a cuvee of wines from a variety of sites in the Willamette Valley. It, too, has an extraordinary freshness, with notes of filet, smoke and stony minerality seamlessly interwoven at the velvety finish.

Taken together with the 2021 rieslings we reported on a few weeks ago, this must be the best vintage since the death of founder Jimi Brooks in 2004. Given that 2021 was the summer of the heat dome over the Pacific Northwest, this achievement by the winemaking team of Christopher Williams and Claire Jareau looks nothing short of miraculous.

And staying in Europe, James tasted two new releases from Bibi Graetz – his highly perfumed, salty and umami whites from the Tuscan island of Giglio, the Bibi Graetz Toscana Bianco Testamatta 2022 and Bibi Graetz Toscana Colore 2022. Both wines are made from the ansonica grape grown on the hillsides of the island. Although Graetz owns about 10 hectares, he works with a handful of local growers who he says can be as difficult to deal with as the rugged terrain and intense growing conditions. Both whites have intense flavors of the sea and dried citrus fruits. "Giglio means goat [in Greek] and these wines hit you like a goat with horns,” Graetz said during the tasting at our office in Tuscany. "There is so much flavor!"

READ MORE OREGON ANNUAL REPORT: SILVER LININGS FROM 2020 AND THE QUEST FOR PREMIUM CHARDONNAY

A TOUCH OF FRANCE IN PASO ROBLES

Tasting Manager Kevin Davy and Associate Editor Andrii Stetsiuk were in Paso Robles, California, over the past week, where their tastings confirmed the rising influence of Rhodanian-inspired wines.

A handful of remarkable wines shone, starting with those of Linne Calodo and winemaker Matt Trevisan, who crafts dry-farmed blends full of character, such as Rising Tides and In My Dreams. The vitality and energy is obvious in his wines, and his cuvee Cherry Red, which is based around dry-farmed zinfandel, is a prototypical beauty for the genre, with an elegant floral nose and a plush and harmonious palate with excellent texture and length.

Mark Adams of Ledge Vineyards also impressed with his Grenache Blend 2021 – an intense, textured and voluminous wine that remains harmonious and agile. His James Berry Vineyard 2021 was equally seductive and precise with a very focused expression.

Kukkula delivered as well with a stunning wine in the form of a unique 85 percent syrah and 15 percent petite sirah blend. Wisely named Noir ( “black” in French ), this wine reflects Kukkula’s philosophy in a nutshell: intense, focused and with a controlled power.

Guillaume Fabre’s Clos Solene wines, meanwhile, all came with great balance with elegant texture. Their Cuvée Jean is superb, with a racy character and an old-world feel with 97 percent syrah and 3 percent viognier revealing its bright character.

READ MORE PASO ROBLES DIALS UP THE HEAT ON DRINKABILITY: 2022 ANNUAL REPORT

A GRENACHE ROSÉ THRILLS

Ned Goodwin MW is currently in Japan, tasting wine across various regions. Before he left his tasting bench in Sydney, however, he was fortunate to taste some delicious wines that served as affirmation of the meteoric rise in the quality of rosé in the country, the intuitive nature of mourvedre, a grape that was once much more widely planted, as well as a more laissez-faire approach to many of the better rieslings.

Ned tasted a brilliant rosé from Tripe.Iscariot, a winery in Margaret River, Western Australia. Its winemaker, South African expatriate Remi Guise, describes the project as an “experiment in flavor, texture and style.”  While Remi also crafts some intensely flavored chenin blanc, it was his Grenache Rosé Aspic 2022 that brought thrills with a chill! While grenache is more commonly associated with South Australia and McLaren Vale’s higher, sandier sites in particular, this is a dangerous, mid-weighted dry style to be drunk in large drafts, such is the confluence of textural complexity and thirst-slaking freshness.

Ned was also impressed by another Western Australia project, Swinney, which is situated in Great Southern – a vast expanse of maritime cool in the state’s deep south.

Renowned on home turf for its grenache, it is the Swinney Mourvèdre 2023 that goes a step further in the cool and prolonged 2023 vintage. This is likely because grenache’s later ripening physiognomy is tempered by earlier flowering, which is hazardous in a vintage that started so wet. The mourvedre, on the other hand, was able to ripen slowly as the weather dried out. The wine is a powerful expression that is briny, chewy and gorgeous in its savory guise, with accents of tapenade, saddle leather, sweet loamy earth, martini brine, menthol and violet notes.

This is a highly structured, ferruginous wine that is built for the cellar or the decanter, if breached now. There should be much more mourvedre in the ground in Australia. Like grenache, it is meant to be here.

Ned also exalted the virtues of Henschke's Julius Riesling 2023, a gorgeous thoroughbred from recently appointed head winemaker Gwyn Olsen. Riesling in Australia is much juicier and less brittle today than in the past. Winemakers are practicing less-invasive approaches without excessive pH tweaking, often encouraging a trace of residual sugar to mitigate the grape’s inherently high acidity. The Henschke expresses hints of kaffir lime, embellished with more resinous notes of wild fennel and preserved lemon. When asked what she drinks at home, Olsen reasoned that “the structural finesse and detail” of good German riesling makes a case for daily drinking. It is no wonder, then, that this is such a delicate, balletic riesling, barely nudging mid-weight, drawing tension as much for its skein of acidity as well appointed phenolic rims. It is a triumph in her first vintage!

– Stuart Pigott, James Suckling, Kevy Davy and Ned Goodwin MW 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.