Wondrous Spatburgunders, Giant Steps in Australia and the Ningxia Way: Weekly Tasting Report (Nov 23-29)

Our top-scoring wines from the nearly 500 bottles we rated over the past week came from Germany, with Senior Editor Stuart Pigott hot on the trail of more of the country’s wondrous pinot noirs, or spatburgunders, which he has been tracking since the 1980s.

“They just kept improving as the winemaking has gotten better, but I thought there was a limit to that because of Germany’s climate,” Stuart said. “All the old books tell you that only Burgundy has an ideal climate for pinot noir. Then I realized climate change has made that statement obsolete. The 2019 wines from Friedrich Becker in the Pfalz decisively confirm this.”

The highest rated of these is the near-perfect Friedrich Becker Spätburgunder Pfalz La Belle Vue 2019, a wine with almost overwhelming fragrance, structure and freshness. “I really struggled to find words that could adequately describe this, but the most important thing is that none of winemaker Fritz Becker’s brilliant 2019 pinot noirs taste like copies of Burgundy,” Stuart said.

The Friedrich Becker winery is just a couple of hundred meters from the border of Germany with Alsace, France, and his single-vineyard reds come from vineyards on stony limestone soil just over the border. However, local regulations enable them to be declared as German wines, because the winemaking takes place on the Germany side of the border.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF 2022 AND OUR WINE OF THE YEAR

Another striking set of wines Stuart tasted was a row of 2020 vintage chardonnays and weissburgunders (pinot blancs) from Fritz Wassmer in the south of the Baden region, also close to the border with France.

“These wines are vinified in self-consciously Burgundian style with the emphasis on texture and balance,” Stuart explained, “and the last years they just got better with every new vintage. We love that!”

If you are looking for something with a strong resemblance to grand cru white Burgundy, then the concentrated, silky and mineral Fritz Wassmer Chardonnay Baden Schlossberg Staufen 2020 is one of the first really world-class chardonnays made in Germany.

“Many German winemakers growing chardonnay have told me that this grape is wonderfully well adapted to the new warmer and drier climate in Germany, so watch this space,” Stuart said.

During the 40-plus years Stuart and James Suckling have been working as wine critics, they have watched a number of Germany’s once famous estates fade away and some close. “For many years, the state-owned Kloster Eberbach winery in the Rheingau suffered from inconsistent quality,” Stuart said. “But the impressive  2021 wines I tasted a few days ago show it’s finally back on track.”

Here, the decisive factors are the new chief winemaker, Kathrin Puff – who previously worked as the winemaker for Monsoon Valley Vineyard in Hua Hin, Thailand – and a reorientation process. One of the most exciting wines Stuart tasted was part of that process, the dry Kloster Eberbach Riesling Rheingau Zehnstück EL 2021. It has stacks of white peach fruit and structure.

“2021 is the first year that we used the Zehnstuck name on the label,” Kathrin Puff explained. “It is a 3.6-hectare sized sub-site within the legendary Steinberg site. We decided that there more differentiation was necessary, and the wine does taste different.”

THE SWEETER SIDE OF TUSCANY

And we finished up our Brunello tastings over the past week and included them in our annual Brunello report, focused largely on the 2018 vintage. The top Brunello we tapped into during the week was San Polo’s 2018 Vignavecchia, which we tasted over Zoom with winemaker Riccardo Fratton.

It’s from organically farmed sangiovese grown in a warm, west-facing single vineyard, and it did well in the cooler, more “classic” 2018 vintage, showing complex spice, herb and dark fruit.

Another great 2018 Brunello on the list below is from Roberto Cipresso. It’s more polished, with perfumed lavender and sweet spice character. We also tasted a handful of 2017 Brunello riservas, although not many were made from this hot and challenging vintage.

On the sweeter end of the spectrum in Tuscany, we tasted a few excellent Vin Santo from the likes of Barone Ricasoli, Felsina, Volpaia and Capezzana, the first three from the Chianti Classico region and the last from Carmignano. They’re characterized by vivid acidity and deliciously complex layers of dried fruit, nuts and spices. Released with up to a decade of maturation, they’re drinking well now, perhaps with a mince pie or two leading into the festive season…

There are also some top wines this week from Australia, including the latest releases of the Peter Lehmann winery's premium range. We were most impressed by their Riesling Eden Valley Wigan 2016 and Semillon Barossa Margaret Limited Release 2016. The riesling is produced from higher-elevation fruit at 500 meters and released with five to six years of bottle age, resulting in some gasoline, or petrol, aromas alongside the crushed-stone minerality and mouthwateringly fresh citrus. The semillon, on the other hand, is made from 100-year-old vines, some of the few remaining in Barossa, with a waxy intensity from bottle age. The 2016 vintage is a straightforward, excellent vintage from Barossa.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRALIA 2022

Our top-scoring Aussie wine this week is also from Barossa Valley – a shiraz made from very old, dry-farmed pre-phylloxera vines planted in 1853. The Hewitson Shiraz Barossa Valley Monopole Mother Vine 2020 is opulent yet delicate at the same time, with ultra-fine tannins and an attractive spicy blue fruit character.

We also tasted two contrasting Australian pinot noirs from Tasmania and Victoria, respectively: the Giant Steps Pinot Noir Tasmania Fatal Shore 2021 and William Downie Pinot Noir Gippsland Camp Hill 2021. The Fatal Shore showed such vibrancy of fruit, with blood orange and cocoa-dusted strawberries coming into play, as well as silky tannins. The Camp Hill displayed a more savory, wild rosemary and mushroom character, with exhilarating freshness. Another wine not to miss from Giant Steps is their 2021 Applejack Vineyard Chardonnay from Yarra Valley. It’s sharp, vibrant and intense with a beautiful flintiness.

And for some serious gamay, check out the offerings from Chateau Thivin. They represent fantastic value for money, making top Beaujolais cru wines mostly from Cote de Brouilly, with the depth and complexity that you would expect from a premier or even grand cru Burgundy. Our top pick from their stable is the Cuvée Zaccharie 2020: tight and focused, with crushed-graphite minerality. It’s made from a selection of their oldest vines from their La Chapelle and Godefroy vineyards and will reward a couple more years in bottle before opening up. And also check out the Reverdon 2020 and La Chapelle 2021, which are both drinking deliciously right now.

BEATING THE ODDS IN CHINA

In Beijing, Senior Editor Zekun Shuai managed to taste a few wines at his home amid the rigid pandemic controls in the country. One of the standouts came from the Kanaan Winery in Ningxia province, which was founded by Wang Fang and her father, Wang Fengyu, a co-founder of one of the first Ningxia wineries to gain global recognition, Helan Qingxue.

As a German Chinese, Wang Fang has long had a love affair with riesling, which is why she planted the grape around 10 years ago in Ningxia’s not-so-riesling-friendly environs of the Gobi Desert. But Kanaan beat the odds once again while battling the Gobi’s arid climate with the Kanaan Winery Riesling Ningxia 迦南美地雷司令 2021 – one of the ripe and flavorful wines from the dry and warm vintage.

Many winemakers, including Wang Fang, considered 2021 to be a good year. Although it was free of frost, the drought that occurred during the year resulted in higher alcohol levels in the wines. Many winemakers had to struggle to ferment to complete dryness, but Kanaan’s riesling has all the benchmarks of a balanced wine, with a limey, chalky feel and showing typical aromatics of green apples and nectarines on the nose.

Its clarity and fuller body give it the crunch and agility of a fine German trocken riesling, with a sharpened texture. It should be noted, however, that although Wang’s 2021 riesling is a laudable effort, it still has a way to go to catch up to the best German renditions.

For the reds, the Kanaan Winery Ningxia Black Beauty 迦南美地黑骏马红葡萄酒 2020 is a pure cabernet sauvignon that comes from the challenging, frost-stricken 2020, a year where Kanaan didn’t produce its flagship red, the Crazy Fang. But against all odds, the Black Beauty still delivers a complex nose with plenty of dusty tannins that extend to a long, cohesive finish.

– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor; Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor; Zekun Shuai, Senior 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.