A Stunning Semillon from Argentina and a Bojo Revelation: Weekly Tasting Report (March 1-7)

A few top Argentine producers landed the highest-scoring wines on our ratings list this week, with two receiving perfect scores – neither of which is a malbec. One is a 2019 cabernet franc from El Enemigo, and the other a 64-year-old semillon from Bodega Norton that Senior Editor Zekun Shuai said left him with goosebumps.

Bodega Norton’s chief winemaker, David Bonomi, kindly opened the Bodega Norton Semillón Argentina Vino Fino Blanco 1959 during a tasting session with Zekun, calling it an “epiphanic wine” that steered him down the path of making wines from the low-profile varietal. It’s a shame that this beautiful, long-lived and nectar-like semillon isn’t available on the market, with less than a thousand bottles lying in store in Bodega Norton’s dim cellar in Mendoza. Read the note to get a sense of how a great semillon ages effortlessly. More and more producers and growers in Argentina have been planting semillon over the past few years as they try to revive its glory days.

The main spotlight for this report is on Argentina’s 2021 vintage – a cool and blessed year where the Mendoza region churned out elegant wines underpinned by freshness, precision and clarity. According to Laura Catena of Catena Zapata, 2021 was similar in coolness to 2016 but not as rainy, which explains the refinement and tension found in many of the wines. Alejandro Vigil, who runs El Enemigo and is also the winemaking director for Catena Zapata, said 2021 was much more uniform in quality compared with the wetter and more extreme 2016.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF ARGENTINA 2022

The top wines of 2021 included some outstanding and consistent deliveries from Catena Zapata’s coveted “grand cru,” the Adrianna vineyard, which is found in the higher part of Gualtallary. The Catena Zapata Malbec Mendoza Adrianna Vineyard Mundus Bacillus Terrae 2021 is one of the best malbecs ever from this 1.4-hectare parcel, showing impressive depth, concentration and finesse. The complexity along with its subtle mossy and wet-earth notes set it apart from the more mineral, chalky expression from the five-hectare Fortuna Terrae vineyard and the more ethereal, pinot-esque rendition from Catena Zapata’s 2.6-hectare River parcel.

As for chardonnays, while Zekun believes that Catena Zapata’s Adrianna Vineyard White Stones 2021 resembles the finest Chablis with its wet-stone minerals and tension, the real standout chard for him is the Adrianna Vineyard White Bones 2021. He said it’s one of the “most idiosyncratic” wines to come out of South America, with its wild thyme, rosemary, ginger and spice notes.

“For the White Bones, it is difficult to relate to Burgundy when you get such an exotic and seductive nose that takes you to the extreme landscape of higher Gualtallary, where vines are planted with tons of wild herbs,” Zekun said.

El Enemigo Cabernet Franc Gualtallary Gran Enemigo Single Vineyard 2019, meanwhile, sets a new bar for South American cabernet franc – it’s the first cabernet franc from South America to receive a perfect score from us. It’s impressive how this wine, from a 1.5-hectare plot in Gualtallary, delivers the nervy freshness and mineral tension from the vineyard’s complex, calcium-carbonate-rich soils. It is deliciously austere and textured with mealy, chalky tannins that dissolve on the palate, highlighting the purity that comes with the dry and moderately cool 2019 vintage – which many Mendoza winemakers consider one of the top years in the last decade.

Vigil said that he didn’t want to “mess with nature” in making the wine, following the Burgundian ideal. “The vines need to look balanced; they need some stress,” he said. “In Burgundy, people are now saying that you don’t want to have really low yields because that gives overripe grapes.”

The healthy yield of cabernet franc helped the Gran Enemigo 2019 retain more freshness, which was also the case with the Catena Zapata Mendoza Nicolas Catena Zapata 2020, an early and challenging Covid vintage marked by warm conditions before the harvest. It was also the first vintage that the blend had such a high percentage of cabernet franc from Paraje Altamira, taking 25 percent of the blend. Zekun loved the Bordeaux-like finesse here with excellent freshness, the total absence of sweetness on the palate with a seductive, wet-stone verve, which winemaker Fernando Buscema said was the distinctive characteristic for Gualtallary’s cabernet sauvignons in 2020.

READ MORE TOP 100 VALUE WINES OF 2022

PAUL HOBBS ON MENDOZA'S 'MONUMENTAL' VINTAGE

Another splendid red from 2020 is from Paul Hobb's Viña Cobos winery in Mendoza, the Viña Cobos Malbec Mendoza Cobos 2020. It's a malbec that combines pure ripeness and freshness, with 75 percent of the fruit from the Chañares estate in Los Arboles and 25 percent from Hobbs' estate in Perdriel. 2020 saw an early harvest at the beginning of March, and this wine captures aromas of sage, garrigue, jarilla and spices that bring more layers of the vivid and exotic herbs found in the vineyard.

“We never had any experience in picking a whole month earlier. But we would have made a mistake if we didn’t harvest and wait. I am very pleased with the wines from this vintage. They are fresh with great energy,” Hobbs told Zekun.

Even though 2020 is a little less glossy and concentrated than 2019, Zekun believes that the early harvest of 2020 has added more to the signature opulence of Cobos, rendering a sense of place and variability but dialed back on voluptuousness – another stellar, delicious yet less predictable Cobos, indeed. You can also check out Hobbs' thoughts on the 2021 vintage in Mendoza in the video, above.

BOJO REVELATION

Last week, after several weeks of intensive tasting at his home in Germany, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott traveled to Beaujolais to visit a dozen of the region’s leading winemakers and taste with them. "2021 was a really challenging vintage for the region, but there were some stunning wines from the leading winemakers, and then I had a moment of revelation that I will never forget," Stuart said.

It happened at Domaine Anita in the commune of Chenas, where Anita Neveu has been making wine for just a decade. Two years ago, after tasting her 2019s, we acclaimed her as one of the most dynamic members of the leading group of new Beaujolais winemakers.

“That didn’t prepare me for what I tasted last Thursday at the dining table of Anita’s small house amongst the vineyards,“ Stuart said. "The situation was completely unremarkable, like hundreds of wine tastings with small French producers over the years. However, Anita’s new 2021 vintage wines are very remarkable."

"The first red wine I tasted was really good, but as I made my way through the row of bottles, the wines got more and more amazing. Then came the Domaine Anita Moulin-à-Vent Coeur de Vigneronne 2021 and my heart skipped a beat. It is clearly the most extraordinary wine I ever encountered from Beaujolais and a high-point of my 40 years of wine tasting!"

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2022

What makes a perfect Beaujolais? “I couldn’t have answered that question before encountering this wine, because it is a first for us,“ Stuart explained. “It has a totally breathtaking interplay of mineral freshness, a small ocean of berry fruit and super-fine tannins. And yes, there’s the typical Beaujolais vibrancy at the endless finish.“

This was a special moment for Stuart, but if you scan the notes below you will find that he also tasted some great 2020 and 2021 Beaujolais at a handful of other producers, notably Chateau des Bachelards, JeanMarc Burgaud, Dupre Goujon, Mee Godard, Yohan Lardy and Domaine de Lathevalle.

“Although 2021 was a really difficult growing season, a handful of winemakers clearly mastered this challenge,“ Stuart explained. “Anita described the summer to me as a boxing match with the rain! Perhaps it makes sense that an ex-cycling champion should reach for a sporting metaphor.”

Stuart’s detailed analysis of the complex and exciting situation in Beaujolais will follow shortly in his full report on the region.

– Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor, and Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by James Suckling and the 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.