Vintage Report: Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) & Chardonnay – 2022 & 2023

2022 has cemented itself as a legendary, homogenous Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) vintage, blessed with high points the likes of which are totally new to most tasters. Consequently, most of the wines were snapped up on release last year and will remain in cellars over the decade. However, we have one grower who has always preferred to release her wine after an extra 12 months in bottle, gifting us with what is likely to be our last bite of the 2022 apple. In tasting the Adams Wein releases, the 2022s have a shine and a mid-weight subtlety to them that makes them utterly joyful. An under-the-radar producer in the UK but one that is developing a name in German circles, Simone Adams is a young, biodynamic winemaker, backing nervy, herby, aromatic reds and full, mineral-rich whites with bite, from her limestone vineyards in the northern Rheinhessen.

For most producers though, it is the turn of the 2023s, a year that pools the succulence of a warm year like 2022 and the red-fruited juice and cleanse of a cooler vintage. Sebastian Fürst, in Franken, remarked on the wines’ purity and inviting character. That was echoed by the team at Huber in Baden, who describe the reds as being fruity, slender and fine, with a lighter tannic structure. They are exactly the sort of wines that disappear all too quickly over dinner. Of particular note, are the Chardonnays. Not just at Huber, who have isolated exceptional clonal material for their plantings (almost exclusively from Champagne and Domaine Leflaive), but also at Battenfeld-Spanier, in the southern Rheinhessen, bordering the Pfalz. Their Chardonnay and Pinot programme in the Zellertal – where the vineyards are cool, windy, dark-footed and besieged with limestone, is, in theory, coming to fruition now. The debut Mölsheim Chardonnay 2023 in the offer is a striking example not just of potential, but absolute quality. We only say, “in theory”, as following the best reds they’ve made to date in 2022, a major blot on the 2023 vintage copybook was a severe localised hailstorm in late August that wiped out 17ha of Spanier’s Pinot Noir, forcing them to divert almost all the production to Rosé.

There is consensus in Germany that Pinot Noir has largely up and come – at least in qualitative terms, if not yet in price. Chardonnay is the new darling of the day. Outside of the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, where Riesling accounts for 99% of plantings, advocacy is closing in on experimentation, and when luminaries like Klaus-Peter Keller, Oliver Spanier, Julian Huber and others are seen to back it in a big way, the rest of industry sits up and takes note. The Chardonnay story is reaching an inflection point in Germany and there will be a lot more to come on that in future.

For the majority of Spätburgunder producers in 2023, the year can be surmised as a relatively normal one that offers pliancy and fruit over any leanness. The season was mild with warm temperatures and ample water in Spring. The warm, dry spell that followed put some under pressure, but the main challenge for growers were late summer rains that required pre-harvest work to thin the canopies and cut out bunches at the risk of rot. Harvest started in mid-September, roughly as normal. The challenge in 2023 was to pick quickly enough to beat the dreaded Suzuki fly, which attacks fully ripe Pinot Noir grapes and spoils the juice. For the most part, after selections and multiple passes during harvest, yields landed about normal, and the wines have a charming, fruit-forward, yet layered, seamless character with a fine juiciness that will permit some pleasurable early drinking. As always, the top wines will benefit from ageing.

Mark Dearing

Buyer, Justerini & Brooks