It’s mostly about the West Coast wines in this report from a week of tastings at JamesSuckling.com, featuring fantastic Rhone-inspired reds from Washington, energetic chardonnays and pinots from Oregon, and some fortuitous cabernet sauvignons from California – both Napa and Livermore Valley.
And then we had Contributing Editor Nick Stock with some top wines from South Australia’s McLaren Vale and Coonawarra and Senior Editor Stuart Pigott rating some excellent dry wines from Germany’s Baden and Franken.
Cristom and 00 Wines highlight how Oregon is making equally compelling quality chardonnay and pinot noir, with the high-scoring Cristom Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Jessie Vineyard 2018 and the 00 Wines Chardonnay Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Freya Hermann Cuvée 2018. The latter is an example of ultra-handcrafted chardonnay from Oregon that equals most anything from Burgundy in quality. It’s a barrel selection of the best in the cellar and aged a couple of years in Damy puncheons before bottling. It shows incredible depth and extract.
We have hundreds more of Oregon wines to taste this summer and look forward to discovering some of the best from the excellent vintages of 2017, 2018 and 2019. We are also in the process of compiling our report on our tastings of Washington wines. We rated close to 500 wines and they have been very impressive, especially syrah, with grenache and other Rhone varietals following closely.
“When people think of Washington wine they think of cabernet sauvignon, but I think syrah is gaining momentum,” said Christophe Baron, the owner and winemaker of Cayuse Vineyards, who made some of the top wines from our Washington tasting. Baron’s Horsepower and No Girls syrahs from the 2018 vintage, as well as the No Girls grenache, are outstanding quality wines to drink now with such typicity and vibrance. Plus, they have the structure to age.
2018 CAYUSE VINEYARDS VINTAGES: A tasting with winemaker Christophe Baron.
CHIANTI CLASSICO DIARIES: The story of Castello di Volpaia.
I am not sure how typical the second highest scored wine in this report was: Horst Sauer Silvaner Franken Escherndorfer Lump Trockenbeerenauslese 2020. It must be the greatest Silvaner ever made! Silvaner, no matter where it is made, seems to have a threshold for quality but Franken may be the Mecca of the grape, according to Stuart’s findings. There are a number of other top wines from Franken in this report.
We have also been focusing on recent releases of Chianti Classico Gran Selezione. I have found a number of really outstanding wines, such as the single-vineyard bottlings from Volpaia in the center of the appellation near the town of Radda in Chianti: Volpaia Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Il Puro Casanova 2017 and Volpaia Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Coltassala 2018. Reds like these exhibit excellent structure and balance and remain so clear and vivid, showing the real character of their vineyards. The two mentioned come from relatively high-elevation vineyards and make very fine wines.
This said, I remain concerned with the overabundance of new wood character in many of the Gran Seleziones I have tasted. New barrels should not be the prerequisite for the top appellation of Chianti Classico. And it masks some of the unique quality of the wines, considering the diversity of the region’s geography.
It’s all about geography in Chinese winemaking at the moment. If you have read recent news reports, the Chinese government plans to quadruple the size of its very popular wine region of Ningxia in north-central China. According to a China Daily report, the area will comprise 67,000 hectares of vineyards in five years and achieve sales revenue of 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) annually, assuming the plan is approved by the local government. By 2035, the zone is expected to have 100,500 hectares of vineyards and generate annual sales totaling 200 billion yuan. That’s actually a little smaller than Bordeaux.
The question is if Ningxia can find a market for its wines. The China Daily story said that “the zone aims to become a production base for premier wines and export more products to countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.”
Our associate editor, Zekun Shuai, has already visited the area once this year and plans to return. He sees a general improvement in winemaking and a trend toward less extracted and overly high alcohol and ripe wines, but there’s somewhat of a lack in marketing and sales skills. He rated a few dozen Chinese wines in this report, with a number from Ningxia.
There are only a couple of wines from Napa in this report, cabernet sauvignon from two young and dynamic wineries – Kinsman Eades and Hobel. They are outstanding reds and show the intensity and structure of well-made reds but with the polish and better balance of the excellent 2018 vintage. A couple of reds from Wente Vineyards in Livermore were also rated – a 2018 merlot and cabernet sauvignon – and they also should age well, but perhaps have slightly less freshness than the Napa reds.
There really is a wide array of wines to check out this week. Spend some time on the list.
– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor
The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the previous week by James and 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.
Note: You can sort the wines below by country, vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
