Barossa’s Mighty Shiraz and The Paso Robles’ Doble: Weekly Tasting Report (Sept 28-Oct 4)

For the last two weeks the JamesSuckling.com tasting team has been traveling through New Zealand and Australia tasting and rating thousands of wines currently on the market or soon to be released. What we like about the top wines in general is their transparency and balance for their particular regions and places.

For example, the best wines of the Barossa Valley in South Australia are plush yet fresh and harmonious reds with energy, focus and precision. The top syrahs, or shiraz as they call it most times, are some of the best in the world, with many made from ancient vines that are 150 years old or more and planted on their own rootstocks. I hope I don’t need to say that the best offerings the from Barossa are no longer high-octane fruit bombs but wines of place and precision.

I made a joke two days ago to Stephen Henschke, the patriarch of the family winery and vineyard bearing his name in Eden Valley in the Barossa, that he makes wines from Jurassic Park vines, but it’s much more than that! The vines that produce his extraordinary shiraz-based Hill of Grace, for example, were planted in the 1860s by his ancestor Johann Christian Henschke from Germany. The feeling of history and dedication to family is extraordinary in so many wineries in this part of Australia.

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott, who is on the trip with me along with Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt and Nathan Slone, said he was “stunned by the extraordinary beauty" of the structured single vineyard wine of Spinifex, the Spinifex Shiraz Barossa Valley Moppa Single Vineyard 2020. He continues to speak about the transparency and drinkability of so many of the shiraz we taste and drink on our voyage.

Stuart was equally impressed with BK Wines’ 2021 single-vineyard chardonnays in Adelaide Hills, including The Fall and Gin Gin, calling them “delicious revelations.”

Experiences like our visit to Henschke make me sort of angry when people talk about Australia as a New World wine region. It has so much unique history and terroir. It’s one of the oldest places geologically to make wines in the world. We will be exploring much more of the great Down Under as well as tasting and rating hundreds of more wines. We should tap into close to 2,000 wines on this trip, so stay tuned.

READ MORE: HENSCHKE’S BACK-TO-BACK PERFECTION – 2016 HILL OF GRACE

PASO ROBLES' DOBLE: FRESH AND BALANCED

Senior Editor Zekun Shuai, meantime, wrapped up his week-long tasting of the wines of Paso Robles, California, and found plenty of exciting offerings from the appellation. Although Paso Robles wines often come with high alcohol, that doesn’t stop producers from making fresh and balanced bottles. Leading producers such as L’Aventure, Saxum and DAOU Patrimony found high-pitched balance with great intensity and phenolic ripeness that offset the heat, which is barely noticeable even with high alcohol levels.

“To achieve the maturity of polyphenols, we need to keep the fruit longer on the vines because of the cool nights here” said Stephane Asseo of L’Aventure, in Paso’s Willow Creek district. “You have to put everything into context. We are in Paso, so we make Paso wines.”

Asseo also stressed the importance of phenolic ripeness, saying it would be a mistake to harvest too early just for the sake of lower alcohol. “It is crucial to look at the maturity of polyphenols, not just Brix levels,” he said, referring to the measurement of sugar levels in grapes and wine.

L’Aventure’s Paso Robles Willow Creek District Cote a Cote 2020, a blend of 45 percent grenache, 30 percent syrah and 25 percent mourvedre, was the standout among the wineries’ many blended wines and cabernet sauvignons.

But there is another story where adventurous winemakers and producers are on the less-traveled road of making wines with lower alcohol and great drinkability. These often come from lesser-known grape varieties and fruit from cooler sub-AVAs. Some even go beyond Paso and look to the San Benito County AVA or York Mountain AVA, where the climate is cool enough to deliver exciting results even with grapes like pinot noir.

Zekun loved the wines from Daniel Callan, a young winemaker at Thacher Winery who delivered impressive offerings from grapes like valdiguie (also known as Napa gamay) and cinsault (aka black malvoisie).

His personal project, Slamdance Koöperatieve Wines, blends the pair along with a 20 percent addition of negrette from the San Benito AVA to make the Slamdance Koöperatieve Central Coast 2020, which has the delivery of a natural wine with its superb drinkability.

READ MORE GREAT VALUE WINES: CALIFORNIA ZINFANDELS UNDER $30

Such classic, regional California wines recall the old generic wine types that were the staple of the wine industry in the state before Prohibition – wines that were often passed off as “California Burgundy” or “California Claret” but were, in fact, blends of such workhorse grape varieties. Many of these varieties, once so important, were lost due to the economic hardships of the times as well as Prohibition restrictions.

Scroll down to the tasting notes from this week, and you will find much to be excited about from some of the other Paso producers who made an effort to deliver diverse expressions of outstanding quality – from counoise to Bordeaux grapes and Rhone varietals, all the way to some Italian varieties and graciano.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman, and Zekun Shuai, 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.