Bordeaux 2020 Makes Its Case, Plus Loving the Loire’s Dry Whites: Weekly Tasting Report (Dec 21-27)

We keep racking up more Bordeaux 2020 wine ratings each week, with 228 tasted for this report alone. I am personally impressed with the vintage and my feeling without crunching the scores is that it is very close in quality to the superb 2019 vintage, although it produced wines with a little more flesh and plushness in fruit and tannins. This is certainly the case for famous wine estates both on the Right and Left Banks.

The proof is in the bottle in this report. For example, you can see that the Pauillac properties of Lynch-Bages and Pichon Lalande crushed it, with 99 points and 98 points, respectively. Meanwhile, Pomerol domains such as Clinet and Le Gay were equally persuasive, with luxurious fruit and lots of character from black olives to dark fruits and bark as well as velvety yet fine tannins giving them form and texture.

I also continue to think that St. Emilion is shining through beautifully in 2019 with a freshness and finesse to the solid fruit and tannin structures in the wines. “Our 2020 Croix de Labrie is the best of the trilogy,” Pierre Courdurie, who owns his tiny biodynamic estate in St. Emilion with his wife, said in a Zoom interview I had with him. They do all the work in the vineyard cellar themselves. “In 2020, we gained energy in the wine” compared with 2018 and 2019, he said.

READ MORE BORDEAUX ANNUAL REPORT: UNICORNS CUSHION 2021’S ROUGH RIDE

Courdurie is like many wine producers in Bordeaux who felt that the hot and dry weather during the summer grape-growing season in 2020 was easier to handle because of the two similar vintages before it. “With climate change, we need to adapt to the future,” he said. “It is really a question of having a good pH [strength of acidity] to balance the higher alcohol levels.”

Our conversation on climate change was particularly interesting, and I was fascinated to hear Pierre say that he thought there would be “more and more” vintages like the 2020. He also noted that they were using more cabernet sauvignon in their blends, a grape normally thought as a part of the Medoc and not St. Emilion.

BORDEAUX'S 2020 VINTAGE: Pierre Courdurie on the "amazing" upside of 2020.

He also said that the mid-April 2020 frosts in Bordeaux may not have been as bad as some reports stated. He said he only lost 3 to 4 percent of his crop. “It was exceptional,” he said, adding that some natural biodynamic treatments after the four-day frost re-energized the vines.

LOVING THE LOIRE'S DRY WHITES

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted an impressive range of whites from the Loire over the past week, saying that there was a case to be made for the Loire wines from the chenin blanc grape being some of France’s finest dry whites. “However, the popularity of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé from the same region seems to partly obscure wines like the great examples I encountered,” Stuart said.

The 2021 vintage may not be so special for the Loire, but Stuart loved the dry wines from Domaine Huet in Vouvray, none more so than the super-focused and racy Domaine Huet Vouvray Le Mont Sec. “It was clearly made for long aging but is already an intensely mineral beauty," he said.

The 30 plus hectare Domaine Huet is a Loire legend that was founded in 1928 by Parisian gastronome Victor Huet, who built its reputation with Moelleux dessert wines. It has been in the ownership of the U.S.-based Hwang family since 2003, and more recently the dry wines have begun to gain a cult following.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2022

Even more amazing was the lusciously sweet yet beautifully balanced Domaine Huet Vouvray Le Mont Première Trie Moelleux 2020, with its expansive spectrum of stone fruit, citrus, melon aromas. “This is a great example of how Moelleux Vouvray can simultaneously taste very rich and still be refreshing,” Stuart said.

Savennieres is another small appellation in the central section of the Loire with enormous potential for dry chenin blanc, and Stuart said the stunning range of 2019s from Domaine FL in Savennieres confirmed the excitement of his first encounter with this producer.

This time it was the Domaine FL Savennières Chamoureau 2019 that shone most brightly. “It’s as mouth-filling a dry white as a Montrachet Grand Cru, yet so precise thanks to the bright acidity and a high-wire winemaking act,“ Stuart said. The Domaine FL Savennières Roche aux Moines 2019 was hot on its heels. And the prices for all these wines are friendly.

Over in Italy, meantime, Tastings Editor Jo Cooke rated a trio of Taurasi reds from top Campania producer Mastroberardino. The Mastroberardino Taurasi Naturalis Historia Riserva comes from a single 50-year-old vineyard in their Mirabella Eclano estate. It’s a super aglianico with bundles of fruit and immediate appeal.

The silkier and more elegant Mastroberardino Taurasi Radici Riserva uses grapes from the highest part of their Montemarano vineyard, at 550 meters, while the Mastroberardino Taurasi Stilèma Riserva is made in a style that evokes the style of winemaking of owner Piero Mastroberardino’s father, Antonio, in the early 70s. If you’ve been drinking aglianico all your life, this should take you back in time.

All three come from the 2016 vintage, which, according to Piero, was a rather cantankerous vintage for the aglianico grape in the Taurasi area of Irpinia. “After a mild and dry winter with rains only appearing mid-February followed by a cool spring with more rain, the whole summer period was characterized by hot temperatures, again interrupted frequently by abundant, concentrated rainfall, which allowed the grapes to mature slowly with no water or heat stress,” Piero said.

“I have to admit,” he added, “I prefer the quirky 2016 vintage to dry, regular vintages like 2015. In 2016, the vibrant soul of our territory shines through!"

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF ITALY 2022

The highlight of the week from China comes from an ambitious grape variety that thrives in almost every significant wine region in China today. The first vines of marselan were brought to Domaine Franco-Chinois in 2001, when it was known as the Sino-French Demonstration Vineyard. Marselan has since become one of China’s most important grape varieties, widely planted in the Hebei, Shandong, Ningxia, Xinjiang and Shanxi wine regions.

Now favored by many growers and winemakers in China, marselan is a real terroir messenger, delivering wines that show place and vintage character. In Hebei province’s Huailai County, Domaine Franco-Chinois winemaker Zhao Desheng’s soon-to-be-released 2016 and 2017 vintages are both staggering examples of marselan that give panoramic views of the variety. The Domaine Franco Chinois Marselan Huailai Reserve 中法庄园珍藏马瑟兰 2017 shows the youth and more varietal typicity from a warmer vintage full of blue fruit, purple flowers and dried lychee characters, while the Domaine Franco Chinois Marselan Huailai Reserve 中法庄园珍藏马瑟兰 2016 has a spicier overlay with lots of juicy, cool, blue fruit and graceful, silky tannins. Both come with the harmony of freshness and richness you normally look for in a marselan.

One of the top producers for marselan in Ningxia province is Chateau Huahao. The Chateau Huahao Marselan Ningxia Family Collection 华昊马瑟兰家族珍藏干红葡萄酒 2019 shows an exotic blend of purple fruit, flowers, dried longyan and spices, and even more impressive is the wine’s fine, abundant tannins. Winemaker Jiang Tao, who consults for Chateau Huahao, added a small percentage of petit verdot to the wine, solidifying its structure and gravity. It comes from vines of about 13 years old, which is considered relatively old for marselan in Ningxia since the real surge of interest in the grape only began about five or six years ago.

– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor; Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor; Jo Cooke, Tastings Editor; 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.