Stuart Pigott returned on March 1 as Senior Editor for JamesSuckling.com and immediately discovered a sensational new German 2019 wine, while James continued tasting hundreds of wines last week including a great Solaia from Antinori, and some rich Sauternes.
If you've never heard of a winery called Gunther Steinmetz, we suggest you look it up. And you should also check out all the other wines - more than 500 of them - we rated last week in Hong Kong and Germany.
Senior Editor Stuart Pigott in Germany just rated the Günther Steinmetz Riesling Mosel Neumagener Rosengartchen Von Den Terrassen 2019 a perfect 100 points. I don’t normally give this information away in a report but Stuart said that it’s “only the 4th vintage of this wine, but it hits the bulls-eye slap dab in the middle!” I had to share. And the winery made a handful of other 95-plus wines in this report.
Stuart first met Stefan Steinmetz, 42, of the Günther Steinmetz estate in Brauneberg/Mosel just over a decade ago and his wines were already very good then with a distinctive style. But he said that nothing prepared him for the recent tastings of the Steinmetz 2019s. He was blown away by the quality. Stefan and his American wife are extreme viticulturalists, cultivating vineyards that most others would simply turn down because of all the hard work. For example, to get to the vineyard that gave that 100-pointer, they need to walk half a kilometer through the forest, then climb down through treacherous, narrow vineyard terraces that are more suitable terrain for mountain goats than human beings!
However, despite noting the continued improvement, the quality of the mind-blowing Steinmetz 2019s came as a surprise. Yes, the 2019 Neumagener Rosengärtchen Von den Terrassen, a super-concentrated and super-precise dry Mosel riesling, deserves a special mention because it rated a perfect 100 points, but an equally significant achievement are the 13 wines that rated 95 plus last week.
Stefan and Sammie Steinmetz created a perfect wine, thanks to their willingness to tackle vineyard sites few others would.
There are no fewer than 140 German wines in this report from Herr Pigott and he continues to bang the drum for what he describes as the greatest German vintage of his career (and mine for that matter) – 2019. Check out his report on the vintage from late last year as well as his Top 100 German wines of 2020, which is heavily ladened with 2019 rieslings.
Also, don’t miss the mention of some new releases of slightly older vintages of one of Stuart’s and my long-time favorite producers, Dr. Loosen. I still remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s staying with Stuart in his apartment in Bernkastel on the Mosel and tasting hundreds of German wines for The Wine Spectator. We spent many nights “tasting” old vintages of Dr Loosen with owner Ernie Loosen. His wines have always impressed.
Besides all the highly rated German wines, we also rated the new releases of Antinori’s Tignanello, Guado al Tasso and Solaia. All are from the 2018 vintage and they have a calming subtlety, freshness and balance that highlights the cooler nature of the growing seasons, especially compared to the dry and hot 2017. The sophistication and harmony of the wines is very impressive and the wines have a real attraction and drinkability from the agility and fine tannin structure of these popular superstar Tuscan reds.
