One of Napa Valley’s most revered winemakers calls his latest release his “favorite vintage.” That’s saying a lot considering he has been making wine in America’s most famous wine region since the 1970s. And his Continuum 2018 was the top wine from all of our tastings last week, which included almost 600 reviews from Argentina, Australia, Austria, France, Italy, the United States and Uruguay.
Contributing Editor Nick Stock went very long on South Australian wines with his high scores for the likes of the legendary tawny Seppeltsfield, which is released each year from the winery’s rare reserves going back a century and bottled as Para 100 Year Old, as well as the recently released old-vine shiraz from the Barossa’s Torbreck, the Laird 2016, which comes from vines planted in 1958.
But it’s the thought of the Continuum 2018 that stands out in this report, which highlights what is truly great in the vintage for Napa Valley. I hosted a one-hour webinar for the Premiere Napa Valley event last Friday on the vintage, and six winemakers gave their insights into why 2018 is so special. Yet, the words of Tim Mondavi and his daughter Carissa on their wine rang loudest, considering their heritage and reputation there.
“Napa Valley had the reputation for developing big and blousy wines and it’s trying to get away from that,” Tim said. “We never wanted to have big blousy wines, but we also by virtue of knowing every individual block [of vineyards] and ability to micromanage each individual block and crop it properly and harvest it properly and vinify it properly, it gives us the opportunity to have more nuance and elegance.
“You couple that with a cool vintage and ‘Voila!’ – there you go, and I think it is one of our best vintages. It’s my favorite vintage.”
Added Carissa: “It was singing from the beginning. It has so much vibrancy and energy.”
There were also a lot of Barolos singing a few operas last week. I tasted all the top ones and the standout was the Azelia Barolo Cerretta 2017, which showed such purity and finesse, with great structure. It is one of the best wines from the Azelia family ever and highlights how this cooler part of the famous vineyard delivered greatness. I did a quick Zoom interview with Lorenzo Scavino and his father, Luigi, to find out why 2017 was so great for them. They said it was all through hard work in the vineyard and finessing their old vines to deliver great quality. These vines, some past 70 years of age, are not as affected by hot and dry weather.
They also explained that the Cerretta was only their second bottling as a Barolo in 2017, even though the grapes were used for making a simpler Nebbiolo d’Alba for about three decades. “Who would wait more than 30 years to make their first Barolo from a famous vineyard?” Lorenzo said in the interview.
I am thinking that some of the higher and cool vineyard sites made some of the best wines in 2017, which was hot and dry, as you probably already know. Lorenzo pointed out that they had almost 50 days without rain, but the vineyards remained green.
OUTSTANDING VINTAGE
Luca Currado of Vietti winery said on Zoom that he was surprised by the outstanding quality from 2017 and that he was already enjoying drinking bottles from the vintage for their ripe fruit, round tannins and fresh feeling. He said late August in northwest Italy had snow in the mountains, so they didn’t suffer from the heat and dryness. It was cool at night. “The month of August changed it all in the best way,” he said. “You can clearly see this in the wine. It was a very complete vintage: very luxurious and opulent [with] incredible freshness.”
His great grand cru Rocche di Castiglione really showed all these qualities, but so did such Barolo as Conterno-Fantino Mosconi Vigna Ped, Elio Grasso Ginestra Casa Mate and many others.
Some awesome single-vineyard whites from the Hugel family in Alsace made Senior Editor Stuart Pigott’s week. They included the late release Sporen and Schoenenbourg, which are formidable rieslings with focus and structure. We applaud how the Hugel’s late release of these wines gave them maximum drinkability and complexity. There’s more than a dozen other Alsace wines to check out in this report.
Taster Claire Nesbitt and I are working our way through Washington state wines now and we tasted one of my favorites, the Hors Categorie Syrah Walla Walla Valley 2018. The wine shows a real balance and energy that highlights the steady growing seasons and perhaps the slightly generous grape production. There is more to come on Washington!
We have plenty of more tasting to do this summer. We have already rated about 10,600 wines but have thousands more bottles to go. But focus a little on what we have here in this report.
– 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.
