Germany’s Challenging 2021 and Bringing Out the Barolos: Weekly Tasting Report (Aug 17-23)
With our Great Wines of Italy 2022 gathering in New York fast approaching, the JamesSuckling.com team has been working at full tilt to finish its tastings of Italy and a handful of other countries before the festivities get under way on Sept. 8 and 9.
Senior Editor Stuart Pigott, who lives close to Frankfurt, Germany, is currently on his home beat with the focus firmly on the dry white wines of 2021 – a challenging vintage for Germany as much as it was for France, but for different reasons. Germany was lucky to avoid the spring frost that decimated the crop in many parts of France, but it was then hit by massive rain in June and early July.
That led to a devastating flood in the tiny Ahr wine region on July 15, 2021, which killed 134 people and also swept away 10 percent of the vineyards and most of the 2020 vintage reds in barrel overnight. Some barrels were carried into the Rhine and ended up downstream in Holland, 200 kilometers away.
The Ahr Valley still looks like a disaster zone, with no railway line and the ground floors of many buildings unusable. However, other effects of the rain were much more widespread across Germany. The southern half of the Pfalz region, which borders Alsace in eastern France, was just one of the places in the country that received half of its average annual rainfall in June and a load more in early July. This resulted in catastrophic downy mildew.
Downy mildew not only attacks the leaves, it also hits the clusters. Those producers who failed to spray diligently ended up losing the whole crop, and even the leading producers lost at least a quarter.
Although the second half of the summer was much better than the first, the words of Franz Wehrheim of the Dr. Wehrheim estate in the Pfalz summed up the situation. ”After a series of warm vintages, we finally got one in which we had to fight to get the grape ripeness we want,” he told Stuart.
The struggle to optimize canopy, weed and soil management was worth it for Wehrheim and for many of his colleagues, as you can see from the tasting notes below.
When Stuart started tasting in Germany in late July, it wasn’t clear whether it was possible to make great wines at all in 2021, but a month later it’s clear that it was an attainable goal if you were utterly single-minded. No wines prove that more conclusively than the GGs from Weingut Keller in the Rheinhessen, especially their perfect-scoring Keller Riesling Rheinhessen Brünnenhäuschen Abts E GG 2021 and Keller Riesling Rheinhessen Pettenthal GG 2021.
Two perfect wines in a single vintage and a handful that push very close to that make for an astonishing achievement in any vintage, so how did the owner of Keller, Klaus-Peter Keller, do it with dry riesling in 2021? His explanation is disarmingly simple. “You had to go with very small yields and to wait,” he said. “Either you complain, or you really do something, like we did.”
It’s also clear that the Nahe region plus the Nierstein area of the Rheinhessen did well for themselves in 2021. Kai Schatzel of the Schatzel winery in Nierstein proved this with his Schätzel Riesling Rheinhessen Pettenthal Kabinett (Auction Wine) 2021, a sensational Kabinett that marries the lightness of the category with astonishing concentration and a wild flintiness that sets this masterpiece alight. The Thorle brothers, Johannes and Christoph, also showcased the top end of what the Rheinhessen produced with their Thörle Riesling Rheinhessen Hölle Beerenauslese 2021 and Thörle Riesling Rheinhessen Hölle Trocken 2021.
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF GERMANY 2021
But the fact remains that 2021 is mostly a very heterogeneous vintage in Germany, particularly at the lower level of the quality scale, where even some famous producers whose basic wines were rated 90-plus points in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Dr. Burklin-Wolf, for example, received a sub-90 score with one of their 2021s, quite a jump down from how the previous vintages rated. The contrast to the high scores for some of this producer’s best single-vineyard dry rieslings from 2021 is stark.
In fact, the weaker 2021s taste like they come from a downright poor vintage: sharp acidity, lean body and green apple character. On the other hand, the best bottles from the 2021 vintage taste ripe and racy, with impressive richness and aromatic complexity. They remind me of the great 1990 vintage.
Stats never tell the whole truth, but the heat summation – a figure that expresses the total warmth during the growing season – for Germany in 2021 is almost identical to that for 1990. The difference in 2021 is the weather was way more extreme than in 1990, hence the wide spread of flavors and an equally wide range of ratings.
Stuart will soon finish his annual Germany report, but we’ll have more from the country next week.
THE BEAUTY OF BAROLO
The majority of this report remains Italy, with about 520 wines rated from all over the country. Barolo and Tuscany have the top wines and the top of the top was the Damilano Barolo Cannubi Riserva 1752 2015. 2015 was one of the best vintages of recent years, only overshadowed by the exquisite 2016, and it produced dozens of structured, fruity and complex wines like the Cannubi Riserva. This is a selection of the best parcels of the just over 10 hectares that the Damilano family controls of the original plot of Cannubi, arguably Barolo’s most famous vineyard. The 2015 riserva was aged five years in Stockinger casks and about a year in bottle before release.
Another riserva you won’t want to miss is the Massolino Barolo Vigna Rionda Riserva 2016. This is a Barolo riserva that shows the magic of the great 2016 vintage with its power and richness yet finesse at the same time. Massolino makes some of the finest crafted Barolos in his Vigna Rionda, both normal and riserva bottlings.
Two close-scoring top wines from Tuscany in this report were from the same producer, Castello di Ama. The Castello di Ama Chianti Classico Gran Selezione San Lorenzo 2019 is a fantastic single-vineyard Chianti Classico that nearly always makes Ama’s most balanced wines.
The addition of tiny amounts of merlot and malvasia in the bottling seems to give the wine a lovely balance and finesse. Ama’s merlot legend, L’Apparita, also made an exceptional wine in 2019, but it was one of the most powerful James remembers since its inception in the 1980s.
There were two other very noteworthy wines that James gave high scores to in this report and they were both whites: the Pio Cesare Chardonnay Langhe Piodilei 2020 and Schiopetto Friulano Collio Mario Schiopetto M 2021. The Pio chard is the most structured we have tasted, with plenty of phenolic structure and ripeness that gives it a newfound seriousness to be one of the best renditions of the grape in Italy. It comes mostly from the Mosconi vineyard in Barolo. The Schiopetto M 2021 was equally compelling, with an excellent structure and depth due to the pristine parcel of old-vine friulano planted in the winery’s vineyards in the early 1950s and the meticulous viticulture practices for them.
READ MORE GREAT VALUE WINES: 10 BAROLOS UNDER $50
THE BEST OF MASSOLINO
Our Hong Kong office’s top discoveries this week also came from Italy, with another Barolo as well as a Marche red taking the spotlight. Senior Editor Zekun Shuai tasted a lineup of outstanding wines from Massolino that accentuate the beauty of Barolo and Barbaresco in a more eclectic style, delivering finesse with austerity offset by discreet richness.
The best of the flight was the Massolino Barolo Vigna Rionda Riserva 2016, one of the most ageworthy wines from Massolino that hails from a top cru of Serralunga d’Alba – a commune where wines are typically marked by power and fine austerity. In the Vigna Rionda Riserva, one finds grandeur, too – something more complex, profound and lustrous.
The Massolino family, the largest landowner of the Vigna Rionda vineyard, delivered a unique expression of the 2016 vintage. The wine starts out with a more solemn, darker profile showing poised ripeness with notes of mussels, iodine and dark minerals before it turns a bit “bloody,” if not citric and mineral, too, with some minty and tarry undertones. The palate is marked by massive yet seamless tannins, giving it a caressing grip that melts along with the lingering mineral finish.
Beneath the delicate austerity and power, there is flesh as well as very discreet, fine-tuned opulence, which makes it an extraordinarily complete and seductive expression of Barolo. The longer you taste it, the more it offers and the more captivating it becomes. As Zekun wrote in his note, tasting the Vigna Rionda Riserva 2016 is a “sensual experience.”
From the village of Serrapetrona in the Italian region of Marche, the Fontezoppa winery delivered a sensational expression of vernaccia nera. We were particularly struck by the punchy nose of the Fontezoppa Serrapetrona Morò 2019, which is full of black pepper, blue flowers and wild spice. This wine entices you to really swirl the glass and get your nose into it to enjoy the pure and tangy aromas that render a glossy and mealy sensibility. Full-bodied and tightly wound with fine tannins, it is also a wine built for aging. Marche reds don’t often appear on our radar, but this one is a game-changer.
And it was the renowned Spanish sherry bodega, Gonzalez Byass, that once again upended our notions of great saca wines with their new edition of Jerez Tio Pepe Fino Tres Palmas. We tasted their almost painfully concentrated yet great Cuatro Palmas Amontillado a few months ago, but this unique selection of Tres Palmas drinks as a fino and is a relief from the extreme concentration. That said, it is still very intense and pungent but also layered and fruity at the same time, with its cooked apricot, ginger, and lemons, as well as a sour bread and briny character. We also love its balance, and it comes with a finesse and elegance that makes this fresh and bone-dry fino neither extremely demanding nor too esoteric but more approachable and eminently drinkable.
– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor; James Suckling, Editor/Chairman; 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.
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