James Hits Napa, Plus Argentine Delights and Bordeaux's Endless Sizzle: Weekly Tasting Report (Feb 15-21)
It’s a little surreal that I have included in this report ratings of nearly two dozen wines from Premiere Napa Valley because I just arrived in Napa today from Hong Kong to begin a few months of tasting and traveling on the West Coast as well as Italy and France. Stay tuned for lots of wine reviews and reports.
The annual wine trade auction in Napa features special lots of wines – anything from fresh sauvignon blanc to bold young cabernet sauvignon still in barrel. Most of these wines are normally not made. They include special single-vineyard selections, different grape types or unique blends. They are usually sold in lots of 60 to 120 bottles.
Ten of the 29 Premiere Napa Valley wines that I tasted were barrel samples from 2021 – five reds and five whites. It was my first experience with the vintage. I have already heard a lot of this new vintage, and winemakers are talking it up because of the excellent weather during the growing season and the smaller than normal crop. The handful of 2021 reds I tasted were very dark-colored (cabernet sauvignon) with dense palates and creamy tannins. Is it the new 2016? Meanwhile, I was happy to taste a number of 2020s, which were very good quality, clean and fruity with some herbaceous character. I was happy that I found no smoke taint from the late September fires. Many producers didn’t bottle reds in 2020.
I also tasted some 2019s, which were beautiful as usual with bright and clear fruit and well-cut tannins and structure. Many are equal or similar to reds from the 2018 vintage but with slightly purer fruit character. The year had a similar growing season to 2018 but a smaller crop. Winemakers could basically pick whenever they wanted. With a long growing season at consistent temperatures, the tannins in the grapes came together beautifully. The best young reds show polish and tension from the finer tannins. Of course, some winemakers went for more stylized wines and picked later. So be aware of overdone wines.
Check out in this report’s ratings for the reds of winemaking veteran Paul Hobbs, which highlight the best of 2019 and showcase the character described above. Plus, they were some of the best wines in this report. Paul and I did a Zoom session together (above right) a couple of weeks ago and it was full of excellent information on the 2019 vintage
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF THE USA 2021
DECADE OF DISTINCTION
Rockstar 2019 Bordeaux, however, is the main feature of this report covering what we tasted and rated around the world over the last week, with Haut-Brion receiving two perfect scores for both its white and red from the vintage. The last time that happened was in 2010 when I was a senior editor with the Wine Spectator. The red Haut-Brion 2019 is one of my wines of the vintage. Please check out the story posted on Monday. Tasting notes are available to subscribers.
You are probably already aware that 2019 is part of a trilogy of fantastic quality years along with 2018 and 2020. The bigger picture is that the three are part of a decade of outstanding quality vintages that has never been seen before in Bordeaux: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 (some major frost but many excellent wines made), 2018, 2019, and 2020. They last time I personally experienced this as a wine critic and journalist was in the 1980s. So it’s never been a better time to buy, drink and cellar fine young vintages of Bordeaux.
Also, you don’t have to spend a fortune on blue-chip Bordeaux like Haut-Brion. My team and I rated almost 1,500 2019 Bordeaux and there are literally hundreds of excellent-quality bottles for between $20 and $50 a bottle. And the vintage made fresh and refined wines that are beautiful to drink young but will age for decades ahead. If you have tried some 2015 Bordeaux, then you should like the 2019s, but I think the 2019-made reds are slightly fresher and finer.
The majority of the wines we rated for this report, however, are Argentine – 248, to be exact. We have rated so many outstanding wines from the country already, from a string of excellent vintages in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. The 2021 vintage has made some nice wines so far, but Mendoza, which represents 70 percent of the country’s production, had rain during part of the harvest and cool and overcast weather at the end of the grape-growing season. So it was a challenging vintage. We are tasting hundreds more Argentine wines over the next few weeks.
A few interesting merlots are also in this report, such as the upgraded Barone Ricasoli Toscana Casalferro 2018, which is now focused on three key vineyard sites and soils of the winery’s large vineyard holdings in Chianti Classico. Canadian winery Checkmate also made some single-vineyard merlots that were very impressive. Merlot from British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley also shows excellence.
Lots going on in this tasting report. Enjoy.
– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor