THE N EW G UARD

France

Domaine

Didier Dagueneau

BLANC ETC… 2019 VIN DE FRANCE

Didier Dagueneau, the most celebrated winemaker of the Loire’s Pouilly Fumé appellation, died in a tragic plane accident in 2008. Few imagined anyone could be capable of carrying on the legacy of this sauvignon blanc master, a man who revolutionised both viticulture and winemaking in the Loire Valley. Yet that’s precisely what Didier’s 25-year-old son Louis-Benjamin Dagueneau did, taking over the estate with his sister Charlotte, and only raising the bar higher. In 2016, at 33 years old, he was named winemaker of the year by France’s leading industry magazine, Revue du Vin de France. In 2019, Louis-Benjamin also raised eyebrows for battling with French labelling authorities for excluding one of his wines from the appellation as atypical. Finally, he decided to label his wines Vin de France, forsaking the Pouilly Fumé appellation his father once embodied. His round, full-bodied, age-worthy cuvée “Blanc Fumée” was reborn as Blanc Etc..., a nod to Serge Gainsbourg’s scandalous hit “Aux armes, etc…”, a reggae rendition of France’s national anthem intended as a snub to the establishment. Louis-Benjamin’s iconoclastic father would have approved.

WEINGUT VON HÖVEL SCHARZHOFBERGER GROSSES GEWÄCHS (GRAND CRU) 2020 DRY RIESLING

Distance makes the heart grow fonder – so it was for Maximilian von Kunow, the seventh-generation head of Weingut von Hövel, an estate founded in the Saar valley in 1803 and one of the few to own vines on Germany’s most famous slope – Scharzhofberg, the temple of riesling. After his winemaking studies, Maximilian left to work at estates from the United States to South Africa. Along the way, he came to know his palate – preferring wines made using minimal oenological intervention – and realise how lucky he was. “The chance to make wine on the Scharzhofberg is beyond words, it’s like being allowed to make a La Tâche,” he says. “Nowhere else in the world can you produce so many different riesling styles on one hill.” Returning to head Von Hövel in 2010, Maximilian expanded his range from this slope, renowned for its wines bottled at varying levels of residual sugar, by creating dry wines. To taste his acclaimed Scharzhofberger Grosses Gewächs (Grand Cru), a dry riesling embodying the Scharzhofberg’s exquisite saltiness and cassis and gooseberry aromas, we understand why.

BODEGA CATENA ZAPATA ADRIANNA VINEYARD, MUNDUS BACILLUS TERRAE, 2018 MALBEC

Founded in 1902, Bodega Catena Zapata is Argentina’s oldest family-owned winery, today managed by fourth-generation winemaker Dr Laura Catena. Synonymous with the rebirth of malbec, it was under Laura’s father Nicolás the estate first earned its reputation. Inspired by the California winemakers who shocked France’s greatest estates in the Judgment of Paris tasting, he sought to reveal the potential of Argentina to make wines of complexity and freshness, leading to his planting Mendoza’s first high-altitude malbec vineyards, including the Adrianna vineyard, now known as “South America’s Grand Cru”. As a Harvard-educated biologist and physician, Laura has intensely researched these high-altitude vineyards, where the amplitude between day and night temperatures increases, and the wines develop disproportionately higher levels of tannins, adding to their power, texture and richness. The vineyard’s limestone soils, never tainted by pesticides, are particularly rich in rhizobacteria, the micro-organisms that help vine roots absorb nutrients. Thus, the name “mundus bacillus terrae” or “elegant microbes of the earth” was given to Adrianna’s remarkable malbec cuvée, a “deep, decadent red” for which critic James Suckling gave 98 points.