Beating the Heat Dome, and Living Up to the Noval Port Standard: Weekly Tasting Report (June 12-18)

When I think of the 2022 vintage in California, the unique “heat dome” of the growing season comes to my mind – when areas such as Napa and Sonoma counties experienced some of the hottest and driest days in the history of vine growing.

However, that weather event is easy to forget when you taste pinot noirs and chardonnays from top producers from such regions as Sonoma Coast, Russian River, Anderson Valley and Carneros. Even some who picked mostly after the scorching temperatures, which reached as high as 118 degrees Fahrenheit (47.7 Celsius), made tensioned and focused wines.

Extreme heat is produced by heat domes and they are created by a “strong change in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That steamy air becomes trapped under a dome-like area of high pressure, causing “vast areas of sweltering heat,” the agency said.

But the best wine producers of pinot noir and chardonnay in this report seemed to be able to navigate this extreme weather with relative ease. It helped that 2022 had an early bud break and the weather was relatively mild for most of the growing season. So, earlier ripening grape varieties were ahead in the growing season, which enabled some producers, such as Kistler and Aubert, to pick almost everything before the dreaded heat dome, which arrived the first week of September and lasted slightly more than a week.

“Bud break was early, so that was the saving grace for the vintage,” said Mark Aubert of Aubert, who produced a perfect chardonnay in 2022. “If it was 2023 with long hang time, it would have been really difficult.

He added during our tasting at his winery near Calistoga that 2022 reminded him “a lot of 2017” but that “it is a little drier.” His winemaker said that “2022 is framed by tannins and 2021 framed by acidity.”

JASON KESNER OF KISTLER ON 2022

Jason Kesner of Kistler said during a tasting at the winery: “We finished picking before the dome or as it set in. There is a notion to the 2022 that it is like 2017. There is a sun-kissed notion to the wines. There is great acidity. The heat [dome] was a disconnect from the mild growing season. We could capture the nature of the vintage.”

Added Ted Lemon, the owner and winemaker of Littorai, who makes some of the best vineyard-designated pinots and chardonnays in California: “I thought it was challenging but then it was a breeze. The wines behaved from the start; it is a miracle. It was so hot yet the fruit was picture-perfect. We had a sorting loss of only  4.5 percent – nothing.”

Lemon was particularly happy with his chardonnays from Sonoma in 2022: “It’s a beautiful vintage for chardonnay. It didn’t really dawn on us. But then, oh yeah, these have lots of character and acidity. They have a lot going on for them.”

MEETING THE NOVAL STANDARD

Before heading off to Burgundy, Executive Editor Jim Gordon was in Portugal enjoying a busman’s holiday in Porto and the Upper Douro Valley, which included tasting through the lineup of Quinto do Noval Ports and dry wines plus those of Noval’s sibling property, Quinta da Romaneira, with the technical director of both, Carlos Agrellos.

Two wildly different Ports from Quinta Noval were the high points of the tasting. The newly released Quinta do Noval Vintage Port Nacional 2022 was easily up to the high standard of this collectible Port produced from a small plot of terraced vines at least 100 years old growing on their own roots in a section of Noval's mountainside estate. It showed superb finesse with great power and a minutes-long finish.

2022 was not a generally declared vintage, but Noval often differs from the crowd in this regard. Agrellos said his team used leaf blowers to dry the grapes after late-season rains and trimmed off any clusters that looked suspiciously moldy before the harvest. The result was 2,400 bottles of near perfection from a vintage he compares to 2011 in quality. The regular Quinta do Noval Vintage Port 2022 showed more brute force, body, heady wood char and grilled fruit flavors. It’s age-worthy, too, and scored just three points lower.

But for those of us who don’t like to wait decades before drinking a great Port, consider a well-aged tawny like the brilliant, layered and deeply complex Quinta do Noval 40 Year Old Tawny Port. It is perfectly mellow, mature, inviting and evolved for current drinking.

More surprising from the Port-producing region were the sophisticated, barrel-fermented dry whites from both houses. They were almost shocking in quality and subtle complexity.

These eye-opening blends of traditional grape varieties are labeled as Douro Branco, and the best example we tasted was Quinta da Romaneira Douro Branco Pulga 2023. Made from 75 percent bual (semillon) grapes and given a lavish fermentation in 75 percent new French barrels, it is concentrated, textural and toasty yet linear and balanced.

BURGENLAND'S REMARKABLE WHITES

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott is currently in Burgundy with Jim, so look forward to an avalanche of tasting notes next week. Before arriving there, though, he tasted a remarkable range of dry white and dessert wines from the Kracher Winery in Burgenland, Austria. The most extraordinary of these were library release wines, or perhaps it is better to call them re-releases.

An increasing number of producers around Planet Wine have pushed back release dates for their top wines, and releasing after five years is starting to look quite normal. However, re-releasing after 25 years is a whole different ball game! That's history in the bottle.

The Kracher Burgenland Trockenbeerenauslese Nummer 6 Grande Cuvée 1999 has a great nose of peat and gunpowder underlined by molasses and candied orange that’s light years removed from the tropical fruit coulis character Stuart remembers this wine having 20 or more years ago. To get that contrast, scroll down and compare this wine with the same wine from the 2021 vintage, which Stuart also loved. What has remained constant in the 1999 over a quarter of a century is the combination of concentration and richness with elegance. If what you’re looking for is luscious fruit, go for the young vintage, but if aromatic complexity is your thing then the mature vintage hits the mark.

Kracher’s Grande Cuvée is a complex blend of grape varieties, sites and vinification vessels that was invented by current winemaker Gerhard Kracher’s father, Alois Kracher, who died in 2007. Gerhard is no less an innovator than his father, and the Sohm & Kracher range of dry gruner veltliner wines is the best example of this. They're a joint venture between Gerhard Kracher and Aldo Sohm, the famous Austrian chief sommelier of Restaurant Le Bernardin in New York City.

The Sohm & Kracher wines divide into two groups: the young wines, of which the 2023 vintage is soon to be released, and the mature ones, for which 2019 is about to become the current vintage. The two wines in the latter group are another dramatic contrast. The Sohm & Kracher Grüner Veltliner Burgenland St. Georg 2019 has a Burgundian textural richness with some very Austrian aromas, like floral honey and lentils, on the full-bodied palate.

The sleeker and more vivid Sohn & Kracher Grüner Veltliner Niederösterreich Single Vineyard 2019 has really complex aromas of toasted nuts, floral honey and mushrooms. The fresh mineral acidity gives this a wonderfully bright and elegant finish.  This one deftly marries youthful energy with some bottle maturation character. How logical that a great sommelier should offer us such a choice of great wines!

Both Stuart and Jim have experienced a great deal of rain in Western Europe, and when Jim arrived in Burgundy on Tuesday night he walked to dinner through quite a serious thunderstorm. The day before when walking through the rain from one winery to the next in Nuits-Saint-Georges, Stuart was stopped by the local police. “Are you OK?”, they asked with genuine concern, then drove him to his destination. We thank the Burgundian police for their support and hope they are also looking forward to our forthcoming Burgundy Report!

SPARKLING IN FRANCIACORTA

Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli was tasting the sparkling wines of the Franciacorta DOCG in northern Italy. “When thinking about traditional method wines, comparisons are always made with Champagne, but in the case of Franciacorta, such a comparison is rather reductive,” Aldo wrote. “Instead, one should seek the identity of this wine in the quality of the fruit. This was the conclusion after three days in Erbusco and tasting around 300 samples. So, would you compare Amarone to Vinsanto just because they share the same production method of drying the grapes?

“We should avoid such comparisons with traditional method wines,” he continued. “Franciacorta enjoys a mild, continental climate influenced by Lake Iseo, which has a moderating effect during the winter and, more important, encourages the descent of cold currents from Valcamonica during the growing season. The soil is morainic, the result of three different glaciations, and thus calcareous but with a percentage of clay that contributes to the weight of the wines.

“This combination of factors demonstrates great potential, as evidenced by the fact that over 60 percent of the wineries are organic. The grapes used are the noble varieties of the traditional method, chardonnay and pinot noir, but Franciacorta also stands out for its extensive use of pinot blanc and the recent rediscovery of erbamat, a native variety that has the advantage of ripening late – more than a month after chardonnay.

“In the cellar, most wineries today converge on certain technical choices. These include increasing alcoholic fermentations in wood to enhance complexity, mostly avoiding malolactic fermentation to preserve freshness, and especially reducing residual sugar, with more and more Franciacorta wines being low-dosage, with the best-quality grapes reserved for zero-dosage sparkling wines.

“Among the confirmations are Ca' del Bosco for the purity of the fruit and precision. Barone Pizzini always stands out for a particular balance between freshness and complexity, as well as Colline della Stella (Arici) and Castello Bonomi. Attention should also be given to vintage rosés like those from Ca’ del Bosco, Castello Bonomi and Barone Pizzini. Among the smaller wineries worth noting are 1701, Corte Fusia, Santa Lucia, and the surprising performance of an underdog like La Fioca.”

Meanwhile, some of the top Spanish wines we have been tasting in our Hong Kong office come from La Rioja, from producers like Bodegas Ramon, Bodegas Lozano and Altos de Rioja. These stood out for a range of releases including Altos de Rioja's pure graciano, the 2022 Pigeage, as well as Ramon's spicy and smoky 2016 Gran Reserva.

Our highest rated was the Bodegas Ramón Bilbao Rioja Lalomba Finca Ladero 2018, a meaty, fleshy and juicy red with smoky paprika and tobacco aromas that is drinking beautifully on release as well as showing excellent aging potential.

– James Suckling reported from Napa, California. Jim Gordon, Stuart Pigott, Claire Nesbitt and Aldo Fiordelli contributed reporting.

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.