LUXEMBOURG NEW ZEALAND SOUTH AFRICA CHÂTEAU PAUQUÉ CHÂTEAU PAUQUÉ RIESLING BOTRYTIS 2018 Abi Duhr of Luxembourg’s Château Pauqué is a virtuoso winemaker, but early in his career, the instrument he performed his concertos on was missing a string. “I always thought the typical taste of Luxembourg’s terroir for riesling was these green apple notes,” he says. “I’ve realised in the meantime they were coming from something else – under-ripeness.” Luxembourg’s rieslings have long been overshadowed by German and French wines – but global warming is changing that. “We’re one of the lucky regions in the wine world because we still have to struggle a bit, but now we manage to get the grapes ripe enough to make aromatic wines with good structure.” Minutes across the border, Egon Müller grows the world’s most expensive white wine, a sublime noble-rot riesling. But Abi Duhr, with his Château Pauqué, Riesling Botrytis 2018, plays a melody just as sweet – and without, as Falstaff magazine noted, any hint of green apple: “Nectarine, candied peach, grapefruit, noble botrytis, with a caramelised palate rich in sweetness, viscous, with a firm acidity, spicy flavours on the finish, great balance, and with a very high concentration … 95 points.” BURN COTTAGE VINEYARD BURN COTTAGE VINEYARD PINOT NOIR 2020 Once a gold-mining area, New Zealand’s Central Otago has been reborn in recent decades as the world’s southernmost wine region, a place critic James Halliday calls “God’s Country when it comes to pinot noir”. Dubbed “Vineyards on the Edge”, Central Otago embodies the Kiwi character. “New Zealanders generally have quite a forward-thinking, pioneering spirit,” says Claire Mulholland, winemaker at Burn Cottage estate, founded in 2002. “There are a lot of practical-minded people here who are always searching for new ideas.” New Zealand’s wine industry has committed to becoming carbon zero before 2050, and in Central Otago wineries like Burn Cottage have been conceived with sustainability and climate change in mind, using biodynamic viticulture to boost vine resilience against arid conditions, cover crops and indigenous tree plantings to protect topsoil from wind erosion, not to mention electric vehicles, drones for vineyard treatments and lightweight, recycled-glass bottles. As for the wine, in the words of Ian Cauble MW: “If you crave thoroughly pure, complex, and lavish pinot noirs, Burn Cottage’s flagship estate bottling will put you in a blissful stupor.” CEDERBERG WINES CEDERBERG SHIRAZ 2020 In 1997, David Nieuwoudt began transitioning his family farm in South Africa’s Cederberg Mountains from orchards to vineyards. At 1,036 metres above sea level, Cederberg is now South Africa’s highest winery, enjoying a cool continental climate free of fungal diseases, with diverse soils, abundant water, balmy days and chilly nights. The main risk is frost, which Nieuwoudt mitigates using frost fans, but those big diurnal shifts are also what allow Cederberg’s grapes to enjoy the long hanging time needed to reach perfect phenolic ripeness. Niewoudt’s Shiraz, planted on red shale, is difficult to compare with those of his compatriots. “They have a beautiful ripe tannin structure. They’re quite big wines, but they’re juicy, fresh and alive, and this is what sets them apart from most other Shiraz in South Africa. They are clean, peppery, very aromatic wines, and that’s the beauty of elevation.” At the 2023 Decanter World Wine Awards, Cederberg’s 2020 Shiraz took home a gold medal: “Oozing charm and decadence, this supremely ripe and meaty Shiraz exudes ample blue and black fruit, coffee, baking spice and cracked pepper. Luscious and accomplished – 95 points.” 66
SPAIN SWEDEN UNITED STATES BODEGA TORRES PIRENE 2020 Miguel Torres of Bodega Torres in Spain made headlines in 2023 when he was named one of Time’s 100 climate leaders, honoured for his system to capture and reuse the CO 2 from wine fermentation. But one of Torres’s most exciting climaterelated projects is his ongoing effort to recover forgotten grape varieties that thrived in Catalonia until European vineyards were decimated by phylloxera in the 1800s. Convinced that many of these lost varieties could have both high oenological potential and greater capacity compared to classic grapes in adapting to heat and drought caused by global warming, Bodega Torres has recovered more than 50 lost varieties, creating new cuvées like its Grans Muralles (featuring the Garró and Querol varieties), Clos Ancestral Penedès red (featuring the moneu grape) and Forcada (named for a white indigenous varietal). In 2022, it released Pirene 2020, a wine of stunning freshness and elegance from a drought-resistant, late-ripening Catalonian grape, planted at the highest vineyard site in the Catalan Pyrenees, at 950 metres altitude. New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov named it one of his 12 best wines of the year. KULLABERGS VINGÅRD IMMELEN 2021 There was a time when the idea of making a fine wine in Skåne County, Sweden (55.9903°N) would be an affront to common sense, so far outside as it is of the latitudes (30°–50°) considered hospitable to viticulture. Yet that is precisely what Kullabergs Vingård is doing, as climate change continues to redraw the winemaking map. If ripening grapes in Sweden isn’t challenge enough, Kullabergs must also overcome general wine-world snobbery regarding the cold-hardy, fungal-resistant hybrids it grows like solaris, which the 2012 varietal guide Wine Grapes (disdainfully) calls a “modern, disease-resistant and early-ripening German hybrid that produces tooth-rottingly high sugar levels”. Clearly, the judges at the 2023 International Wine Challenge in London didn’t agree, awarding Kullabergs’ solaris-dominant cuvée Immelen a silver medal and 93 points: “Beautifully complex with gorgeous passion fruit and peach flavours, fabulous texture and incredible length ...” For Master of Wine Madeleine Stenwreth, it’s a taste of things to come. “Immelen was a real eye-opener for me! A wine from the Nordics which makes a confident statement of what this emerging, seriously cool climate region is capable of …” DR KONSTANTIN FRANK DR KONSTANTIN FRANK, BLANC DE BLANC, 2018 Dr Konstantin Frank is a legend of American winemaking. A Ukrainian-born viticulturist, he concocted the idea of growing vitis vinifera varieties like riesling and chardonnay in New York’s Finger Lakes region using grafting techniques he developed in Ukraine to help them survive the winter. Frank launched his estate in 1958, with riesling as his flagship wine. As temperatures have risen and growing seasons lengthened, serial quality vintages have confirmed Frank’s status as a visionary and earned the entire region renown for its riesling. Today, Frank’s descendants are predicting a new future for the Finger Lakes – as the country’s leading premium sparkling producer. “Our climate is closer to Champagne’s than California’s is,” Frank’s grandson Fred told the Washington Post in 2022. “Down the road, sparkling wine will become the next big buzz for the Finger Lakes.” In 2023, Wine & Spirits magazine named Dr Konstantin Frank one of the world’s “Top 100” wineries – notably based on the quality of its 2018 Blanc de Blanc, a sparkling chardonnay: “The panel was blown away by the richness of this blanc des blanc… 93 points.” 67
