WEEKLY TASTING REPORT (APR 26-MAY 2, 2021): A PERFECT KRUG CHAMPAGNE, BORDEAUX FIRST GROWTHS SHINE AND ITALIAN MOUNTAIN WHITES RISE
A perfect Champagne and hundreds of outstanding quality Bordeaux 2020, not to mention some excellent whites from Italy’s Alto Adige and Trentino, highlight this report covering the more than 530 wines tasted last week by myself and my team of tasters. It was a record tasting, including reviews on wine from such illustrious producers as Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Haut-Brion and La Mission, not to mention Champagne Krug.
I have to admit that I was ready to give the Haut-Brion 2020 a perfect score straight out of the glass. The structure of the wine is really intense, with so much grape-generated tannin backbone that it fills the palate with a fine and energetic texture. It could be my wine of the vintage.
“You feel like the tannins are moving,” Jean Philippe Delmas, the manager of Chateau Haut-Brion, said in a Zoom interview last week. “The aftertaste of the Haut-Brion is … phew! It’s a great wine.”
He agreed that his 2020s are so primary, where you get the true character of the structure of the wines from the grape skins and seeds instead of the wood. (I noticed this in a lot of the almost 900 Bordeaux barrel samples I have tasted so far from the 2020 vintage.) “The Haut-Brion is more open than the La Mission, which is shy today,” he said, adding that they have about 30 percent less production than last year. “Haut-Brion is so brilliant. It’s an incredible wine. 2020 is really something for us… You have a lot of horsepower.”
Horsepower is not a word I would use to describe the Lafite 2020 that I rated, by comparison. It is sublime. The serene nobility of the wine comes through with every sip. It’s subtle and ethereal, with complex aromas and ultra-fine tannins. And it’s only 12.8 percent alcohol. That’s about one degree less than most modern vintages of Lafite and harks back to the great wines of the 1990s and 1980s with its structure and beauty.
“A lot of the vats were only at 12% like when I began working at Lafite in the 1980s,” Eric Kohler, the technical director of the first growth, said in a Zoom call last week.
Added Saskia Rothschild, the head of Lafite: “It was crazy, crazy. Everyone told us 2020 was hot and we measured the vats and they were like what we knew in the 1990s and 1980s. It’s very surprising. It’s about that paradox [of the vintage] that we talked about.”
A big surprise for me last week was the incredible quality of the Smith Haut Lafitte, which I put at the same level as the first growths I tasted during the same period. It could be the greatest Smith ever and shows incredible depth and structure. I spoke to the owner, Florence Cathiard, and winemaker Fabien Teitgen, who were both “very proud” of their results.
“We think that the 2020 is the best of [the] trilogy,” said Cathiard. “It has the structure and the typicity of the 2018 and the aromatics of the 2019. So it takes the best of both.”
They added that in great years for their appellation of Pessac-Leognan, the region mirrors the best Right Bank districts, such as Pomerol. Both were very early in picking their grapes in 2020 and the late September rains did not affect them. “The small amount of rain in September released the tannins,” said Cathiard. “It helped the wine.”
I have to ask myself whether the 2008 Krug that contributing editor Nick Stock rated last week in Adelaide, Australia, is the best ever from the prestigious Champagne house. The 2002 was the very best for both of us until this vintage. The 2008 seems slightly less dense than the 2002 but makes up for it in sheer texture and drive, with a great acid backbone and complexity of aromas and flavors. They are both 100-point wines.
Senior Editor Stuart Pigott didn’t hand out any 100-point ratings last week but he was highly rating dozens of whites from Italy’s Alto Adige and Trentino, the amazing mountain vineyards of northeast Italy. He was homing in on the best wines from regions with biodynamic vineyards, including Manincor and Foradori. The latter made what Stuart the previous week called the best natural wine he has ever tasted – Foradori Manzoni Bianco Vigneti delle Dolomiti Fontanasanta 2020 – but this week it was the famous red from Foradori that he appreciated the most, the Granato 2018. He gave one of the highest scores ever for a sauvignon blanc from Italy to Manincor 2019 Lieben Aich.
Meanwhile, Taster Claire Nesbitt rated about 100 Chilean wines, and it was a red from the surfer-winemaker Charlie Villard that took her top kudos. Villard’s fantastic 2018 Casablanca Syrah, Tanagra, emulates the Northern Rhone – read Hermitage – with its character of blueberry, blackcurrant, violet and peppercorn, and savory and well-crafted fruit and tannins.
For those looking for a super value from a lesser-known country and producer, go no further than the wines from Bodega Bouza in Uruguay, also rated last week. We found some excellent quality chardonnay and riesling from the winery.
Overall, it was another great week of reviews, with something for everyone, and it added up to our biggest week this year for wine ratings.
– James Suckling, editor in chief
The list of wines below are bottles tasted and rated in the previous week by James and other tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many latest releases not yet in the market, but entering 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, and can search for specific wines in the search bar.
To find the Bordeaux 2020 en primeur notes, for example, sort by country and scroll down to ‘France’.