California’s ‘Amazing’ Vintage, Finding Glory in Alsace and a Superb Hill of Grace: Weekly Tasting Report (March 22-28)

When you taste a great young chardonnay like the 2021 Kistler Vineyard Cuvee Cathleen, you need to ask if the white grape is now the most exciting variety in the United States. The wine shows such great opulence and richness with incredible structure and verve. As I wrote in the tasting note, the wine is “complex with a capital C.”

A lot of this great quality comes from the amazing 2021 vintage in California, which is making some incredible wines – both red and white. In this report in particular, the pinot noirs and chardonnays from Sonoma-based Kistler and Dumol highlight the terrific richness and structure of the wines of the vintage.

“The '21s offer this unique interplay between drought conditions and the cool nature of the Pacific Ocean's influence that overlays the vintage," Kistler winemaker Jason Kesner explained in a tasting interview. “2021 was one of the warmest summers on record in California, but it was also one of the coolest summers in San Francisco since 1971, so the coastal influence for us was a key contributor" that helped the grape-growing season.

Check out the videos, below, with Kesner as well as Dumol’s Andy Smith to understand more about the 2021 vintage.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF THE USA 2022

Associate Editors Claire Nesbitt and Andrii Stetsiuk were also in the United States the past week, visiting wineries in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and tasting wines mainly from 2021 and 2019, with fewer 2020s produced because of wildfire smoke that affected many vineyards around harvest.

Two of our highest-rated wines this week are 2021 pinot noirs from Domaine Drouhin. Despite a heat spike in the summer of that year, the season ended with cool temperatures and the wines taste fresh and well-balanced.

Domaine Drouhin’s Dundee Hills Édition Limitée 2021 is a spicy, earthy and tense wine made from a selection of parcels on the Drouhin estate, while the Eola-Amity Hills Roserock Zéphirine 2021 is beautifully fragrant, delicate yet powerful wine that comes from the cooler, windier Roserock vineyard farther south in the valley. Another pinot to look out for is the Antica Terra Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Obelin 2019. It’s agile and firmly structured with wild and peppery aromatics.

The highest-scoring wine from Oregon this week, however, is a chardonnay. The Domaine Serene Chardonnay Dundee Hills Récolte Grand Cru 2019 is intense, layered and powerful, made from a selection of the best chardonnay parcels from Domaine Serene’s estate vineyards in Dundee Hills. Also check out the top pinots and chardonnays from The Eyrie Vineyards, Cristom, Evening Land, Coria and Soter, and keep an eye out for our Oregon tasting report next month.

FINDING GLORY IN ALSACE

Meanwhile, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott was finding glory in the bottle in Alsace, France, where he got his first serious impression of the 2021 vintage there.

“Last year I tasted some early-bottled 2021s from Alsace that showed how challenging the  growing season was for producers,“ he said. “Some wines were a bit thin and/or tart or too rustic. Although I had hoped for more from the region’s top producers, my initially low expectations turned out to be overly pessimistic.”

Again and again, winemakers told Stuart that 2021 was an excellent vintage for those grape growers and winemakers who were uncompromising. Many also said that it was the best vintage for the pinot gris grape in a very long time.

“The decisive proof for all this came when I tasted the Domaine Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Alsace Grand Cru Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Urbain 2021,” Stuart said. “It has an overwhelming smoky and salty minerality that’s married to a brilliance this grape rarely achieves anywhere on earth. It’s an absolutely unique wine!"

How can it be that this perfect wine was made from the same grape that gives light-bodied pinot grigio?

“For a start, the latter are often cropped at more than 100 hectoliters per hectare, compared with just 10 hectoliters per hectare for this Domaine Zind Humbrecht wine,“ Stuart explained. “Then the Rangen is also a very special grand cru that’s ultra-steep with volcanic soils and a history that extends back to the Middle Ages.“

Chief winemaker Olivier Humbrecht MW said of the vintage: “In the top sites if you got things right, 2021 was not a quality issue, but there certainly was a quantity problem. Half of our crop loss was due to the mildew in early summer, but the other half was due to spring frost.“

Although Zind Humbrecht's whole range of 2021 wines is of breathtaking quality, the dry rieslings really stand out, shining as brightly as the pinot gris. Humbrecht compared the vintage to 2010, which stands out due to the combination of high ripeness and high acidity. However, he also sees aspects that resemble 2017 and 2019.

“I had tasted the wines of Domaine Barmes-Buecher several times before so it was finally time for a visit, and what an amazing range they produced in the 2021 vintage,” Stuart said. “Almost every wine I tried tasted like a grand cru, although only a small handful of them actually were."

The highest rated of those wines was the Domaine Barmès-Buecher Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Hengst 2021, which Stuart described as having “giant concentration, but also astonishing subtlety and delicacy. On the strength of these wines this is a first-league Alsace producer."

READ MORE BEAUJOLAIS ANNUAL REPORT: THE BEST VALUE REDS IN THE WORLD?

At Domaines Schlumberger, Stuart encountered an important innovation: the first five vintages of the as yet unreleased ultra-premium dry riesling from the Clos St. Leger. “Having seen it, I am sure this 1.6 hectare site is a very special niche,” he said. “Not only is it very steep and terraced like the rest of the Grand Cru Kitterle, but it’s also the most sheltered section of this famous site. That makes it a jewel of a vineyard.”

You can find notes for all five bottled vintages of this extraordinary dry riesling below, but the Domaines Schlumberger Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Kitterlé Clos St. Leger 2017 (the first vintage bottled separately) looks certain to be the first of them to be released. It is rich and generous but impeccably balanced with a mineral freshness that builds at the long finish.

“It belongs in the same league as Trimbach’s Clos Ste. June and Familie Hugel’s Schoelhammer, both legendary Alsace dry rieslings," Stuart commented.

The weak points in 2021 were the generally off-dry gewurztraminer and pinot noir reds, but even there Stuart found some shining exceptions to the rule, as you can read below.

ANOTHER PEAK FOR HILL OF GRACE

In our Hong Kong tasting office, Senior Editor Zekun Shuai talked via Zoom (below) with Stephen and Prue Henschke from the Henschke winery in Barossa Valley, Australia, about their latest releases, from the 2018 vintage.

Stephen Henschke, the family winemaker, described 2018 as “wonderful” and “classic,” with a moderately wet winter followed by ideal flowering in late spring and a warm and dry spring and summer. This means the yield was average, and the harvest time was standard: for their iconic Hill of Grace vineyard, it occurred just before the Easter holiday of that year, from March 21 to 29. The harvest for their century-old, eastward-facing Mount Edelstone vineyard and the cool, northward-facing Wheelwright vineyard happened after Easter.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRALIA 2022

Their Henschke Shiraz Eden Valley Hill of Grace Vineyard 2018 has great complexity that unfurls on the nose and builds on an intense, lush, concentrated palate without any heaviness. With tremendous depth and persistence at the finish, it still tastes svelte and effortless, with a five-spice and floral allure as well as hints of heather, mint, graphite, salt chocolate and cigar box.

2018 marked the 150th Anniversary of Henschke winemaking and the 60th vintage of Hill of Grace, but their shiraz wines are still among the most sought-after in Australia.

While the Hill of Grace shiraz is approachable now, the price is anything but. This is why we believe the Henschke Shiraz Eden Valley Mount Edelstone Vineyard 2018, Australia’s most consecutively produced single-vineyard wine since 1952, could be a much more money-rewarding proposition at less than one-third the price of the Hill of Grace. It screams freshness and elegance with an aromatic, almost ethereal complexity.

– James Suckling, Claire Nesbitt, Stuart Pigott and Zekun Shuai contributed to this report.

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.