Our previous week of tastings of 630 wines targeted largely on Europe, with James and the crew uncorking the final of their Italian stash earlier than heading to New York for our Nice Wines of Italy 2022 confab subsequent week, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tapping into extra of Germany’s 2021 classic and Senior Editor Zekun Shuai taking a deeper dive into Rioja. James additionally took a aspect journey to Greece, and he’ll give us his vinous Hellenic outlook in subsequent week’s tasting report.
In Germany, Stuart was targeted on the brand new crop of GGs in his tastings. This class of single-vineyard, varietal dry wines was launched with the 2001 classic, so that is the twentieth anniversary of their first launch. The producers affiliation that regulates the GGs, the VDP, threw a giant social gathering on Aug. 20 to rejoice, they usually had good motive to take action.
The GGs have revolutionized the best way German wines are perceived all over the world, enormously enhancing their popularity and waking the world as much as the large leap in high quality dry German wines have made because the final flip of the century. “There’s little doubt that Germany’s equal to the Grand Crus of Burgundy have been an incredible success, even when some wines did not stay as much as the German Grand Cru billing,” Stuart noticed.
That was additionally the case with among the 2021 white GGs that had been offered to the world’s wine media and prime sommeliers in Wiesbaden at a separate sneak preview of the classic on Aug. 22 and 23, additionally hosted by the VDP, the place Stuart’s evaluation was that 2021 was “a really heterogeneous classic that shoots in every kind of instructions, certainly one of which is lean and tart. Riesling GGs that edged on this path rated properly under the gorgeous 2019s and the most effective of the 2020s.” Nonetheless, Stuart added, “You wouldn’t have thought that in the event you had solely tasted the wealthy and texturally advanced 2021 GGs from Heymann-Lowenstein within the Terrassenmosel sub-region of the Mosel.”
READ MORE: THE GOOD, THE GREAT AND THE UGLY: GERMANY’S SCHIZOPHRENIC 2020 VINTAGE
