A New Peak for Napa’s Mountain Wines, and the Most of Malbec: Weekly Tasting Report (March 15-22)

This week’s tasting report is one of our biggest ever, with more than 700 wines reviewed. We are heading toward our goal of rating 30,000 wines in 2022, and we’re loving it on the road and tasting in our offices in Hong Kong, Germany, Italy and Australia. And we are always on the lookout for tasting new and exciting tiny-production wines as well as rockstar cult bottles.

For example, it’s almost surreal to think that I was just tasting in my kitchen in St. Helena a couple of terrific cabernets from the Los Angeles-raised actor turned winemaker Jason Court, under his "evidence" label. A few days before, I was reviewing the exclusive wines of Joe Wender and Ann Colgin of Colgin Cellars in their winery on the summit of Pritchard Hill in Napa Valley. I also sipped a glass of the five-case production of a true-to-form roussanne from Luigi Beltrami, the manager of Bottega restaurant in Yountville, who found the grapes in a friend’s garden in Napa City – and then I reviewed a new set of cabernets from Dana Estates’ Korean-owned wonder, Hi Sang Lee.

Or how about tasting barrel samples of some fantastic 2020s from Verite up in Sonoma, a winery that managed to pick some beautiful grapes before the smoke from two disastrous fires set in. These are all wines, people and experiences that are unique to the dynamics of the wine world in California, particularly Napa and Sonoma.

I was really impressed with the many mountain reds I rated over the last day from wineries in Napa Valley. I believe that 2019 has established a new yardstick for the genre in reds regardless of whether they are from Howell Mountain, Mount Veeder or elsewhere. The vintage enabled winemakers to produce firm and succulent wines with more polished and tender tannins that make the wines more drinkable and complex at an early stage of their evolution.

Winemakers such as Chris Carpenter, who makes wines for such coveted names as La Jota Vineyard Co. and Mt. Brave, explained to me that he could feel this intrinsic gentleness in the grapes before they picked, and dialed-in the finesse in the tannins and brightness of the fruit. The same was true with winemaker Chris Cooney, who said it was easier in 2019 to follow his dream of making more “Burgundian” cabernets from Howell Mountain fruit.

THE CHALLENGE OF 2019: Tod Mostero of Dominus tells James about how 2019's rains affected the vintage.

CATCHING UP WITH HDV: Guillaume Bodet of Hyde de Villaine draws the battle lines on Napa 2018 vs 2019.

Associate Editor Nathan Slone and I also came across two mountain-grown malbecs under The Hess Collection’s Small Block Series from their vineyards in Mount Veeder yesterday. The wines showed a striking earth and fruit character with firm and linear tannins that I have not seen in a malbec anywhere, even at Ground Zero for great malbec, Argentina. The Hess winemaking team of David Guffy and consulting enologist Celia Welch also showed an excellent, new small-production wine that’s not mountain-oriented and is bottled under the name Stalworth. Check it out. A drop of malbec is in the 2019 bottling.

Malbec seems to be an under-the-radar booster for making softer and more drinkable cabs in mountain regions and other parts of Napa. Guffy confirmed this with many of his cabernets, and I see malbec more and more in various blends. Think seriously about malbec in California.

Of course, it probably doesn’t compare to the very best of Argentina. We already rated one Mendoza malbec 100 points this year and we are finding dozens of superb ones in their purest form as well as in blends such as the malbec-dominated Pionero offering of Bemberg Estate Wines that my team in Hong Kong tasted – both the 2017 and 2018. They do have just about equal parts of malbec and cabernet sauvignon/franc in the blends, but the supreme quality of the malbec is what makes for such a wonderful caliber of wines, which are released on the market about four years after bottling to improve their immediate drinkability.

You already know that we love the 2017, 2018 and 2019 vintages in Argentina for all wines – even the more commercial ones. We have already rated more than 2,000 Argentine wines this year and we have a few more to go. We will give you our most comprehensive report ever on Argentina in a few weeks. There are plenty of reviews in this report, however.

Meanwhile, there are numerous Beaujolais and Rhone ratings from Senior Editor Stuart Pigott, who tasted for this report a number of my favorites, including Bojo’s Mee Godard and Rhone’s Domaine Clape. The 2020 Bojos are a slight step down from the great 2019 and 2018, but there are some wonderful wines made for earlier drinking. The 2020 Rhones seem a little fresher than 2019. And Stuart is impressed with so many wines despite the extremely hot and dry growing seasons for both vintages.

There’s lots to be impressed with in this report. Make sure you look at all the wines at the top of the list from Colgin, Dominus and Verite to Achaval-Ferrer, Bemberg and Domaine Nico.

– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor