Classically Chianti, More Penfolds’ Precision and Eclectic Oregon

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team tapped into 508 wines over the past week, led by James and Marie, who visited and tasted at Castello di Ama, which is just outside the village of Gaiole in Chianti Classico and is home to one of the most compelling private collections of installation art in the wine world. Works by internationally renowned artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer and Michelangelo Pistoletto are integrated into the historic estate, offering a rare fusion of contemporary art and viticulture. Marie, who is Korean, was especially drawn to the minimalist work of Lee Ufan.

The experience was elevated by the superb quality of Ama’s single-vineyard Chianti Classicos from the hot and dry 2022 vintage, which showed impressive freshness and structure. Winemaker and co-owner Marco Pallanti attributed this to the estate’s high-altitude vineyards and cooler microclimate, allowing them to maintain relatively low pH levels, with some wines registering under 3.5.

The standout for James was the Gran Selezione Vigneto Bellavista 2022, a structured yet plush expression of the vintage. Close behind was the Castello di Ama Chianti Classico Gran Selezione San Lorenzo 2022, with its intense minerality and vibrancy. At around $60 a bottle, it represents one of the best quality-to-price ratios in Italian wine this year.

Back in Tuscany, Bibi Graetz dropped by James’s tasting office to present his latest wines. His flagship Testamatta 2023 stood out for its linear precision, polished tannins and subtle complexity – remarkable qualities given the challenges of the vintage. Despite widespread crop loss due to downy mildew, Gaetz’s wines showed surprising finesse and balance.

He also shared limited-production bottlings – only 1,000 bottles each – of single-varietal wines from his Podere dell’Olmo estate, perched in the hills above Florence. If you come across them, James recommends picking up a bottle. One to look for is the Bibi Graetz Cabernet Franc Toscana Balocchi di Colore No. 7 Podere dell'Olmo 2022.

Looking across the most compelling tastings of Super Tuscans over the past week, one element stands out unmistakably: territory. The best wines – whether labeled Chianti Classico or IGT Toscana – are rooted in the hills of the Chianti Classico zone, and particularly in its higher-altitude, limestone-rich or stony communes.

This is especially true at the Montevertine winery, which has just released its flagship bottlings: the Montevertine Toscana 2022 and Le Pergole Torte 2022. Despite the drought conditions of the vintage, the results in the cool, high-altitude commune of Radda in Chianti are anything but disappointing.

Le Pergole 2022 is a standout wine once again. Fresh cherry notes blend seamlessly with bergamot and Earl Grey tea – a signature profile of this cuvee. It is spicy and supple, but also structured, dynamic and almost chewy, with polished tannins and a layered complexity that’s only beginning to unfold.

Last week also brought a chance to taste some exceptional whites. In Tuscany, the rediscovery of trebbiano is no longer a trend – it’s a certainty. Once the grape of everyday table wine, the most widely planted variety in Italy until the early 1990s and long treated as a commodity, trebbiano has become, in its new qualitative identity, one of the most compelling alternatives to the usual chardonnay – especially when vinified in a Burgundian style, as it is at Petrolo by Luca Sanjust.

The Petrolo Trebbiano Bòggina B 2023 is vibrant and mineral, full of grapefruit and buttery notes, taut and saline, enhancing the linear character of the grape rather than being overwhelmed by its delicacy.

Penfolds' Precision

It was a week of tasting serious, benchmark Australian wines for Associate Editor Ryan Montgomery, although it all happened in downtown Napa, California. Ryan met up with the chief winemaker of Penfolds, Peter Gago, who presented a tasting that covered some of the most iconic wines in the Penfolds range, including the new 2021 Grange, the 2023 Yattarna, the 2024 Reserve Bin A Chardonnay and and 2023 Bin 707.

There’s not much more that can be said about the Penfolds Shiraz South Australia Bin 95 Grange 2021, other than it once again has delivered, and Gago is still giving his consistent precision and attention to detail as the custodian of this famed Australian classic. The 2021 is made from 94 percent shiraz and 6 percent cabernet sauvignon, sourced from Barossa (66 percent), McLaren Vale (26 percent), and Clare Valley (8 percent). It’s a full-bodied wine with a seamless texture and tannins that melt into a powerful, silky mouthfeel, and it possesses prestige in both structure and presence. This release is slightly more generous and expressive in its youth compared with some earlier vintages, likely due to the warmth of the 2021 season, but the detail and shape is still there.

Sitting just below the Grange is the Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon South Australia Bin 707 2023, which impresses with its brightness and purity, partly due to the cooler 2023 vintage conditions. It displays great clarity of fruit, with cassis, graphite, and cedar, all wrapped in tight, precise tannins. It also has less weight than some recent bottlings but arguably more focus and elegance.

This was also the case with the Penfolds Cabernet Shiraz Bin 389 2023, with the 2023 release – the 60^th consecutive vintage of this wine, which is comprised of 51 percent cabernet sauvignon and 49 percent shiraz – expressing a silky, savory, black-fruited finish with plenty of polish.

On the white side of Penfolds’ latest releases, Gago continues to fine-tune chardonnay, where he ties in both tradition and the new wave of mineral-driven, reductive and rather flirtatious styles that are leading the new world qualitatively. The Penfolds Chardonnay Adelaide Hills Reserve Bin A 2024 walks the line between reduction and ripeness, giving layers of struck match, lemon pith, grapefruit, chal, and lanolin, with a medium-weight palate that balances high-tension acidity and underlying drive.

Sitting a little more on the textured and powerful side is the Penfolds Chardonnay Australia Yattarna 2023, the flagship chardonnay bottling, which was blended from top parcel sources in Tumbarumba, Adelaide Hills and Tasmania. This release shows impressive depth with a saline edge, and Ryan was really struck by the sleek and polished palate with mouthwatering acidity and a sharp line.

In Australia, it’s hard not to come across something sweet at the end of a meal or tasting, particularly when it comes to fortified and botrytis-affected wines. Ryan tasted two vintages of De Bortoli Semillon Australia Noble One Botrytis, starting with the 2015. He found it to be rich and complex, offering notes of grilled pineapple, lemon curd, stewed apricot, lanolin, and toasted nuts with a full bodied, but not heavy, thanks to refreshing acidity. The 2000, pulled from De Bortoli’s cellars, was a standout, with deep and powerful notes of red caramel apple, brown butter, chocolate, and pastry cream. It’s a wine that demonstrates just how well Noble One can age – textural and balanced but with years of life to come.

Eclectic Oregon

Staff Writer & Taster Courtney Humiston was in Oregon over the past week, tasting an eclectic mix of really good pinot noir and chardonnay from the very different 2022 and 2023 vintages, spanning from the Willamette Valley to Southern Oregon.

At the top of her ratings was the Penner-Ash Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Yamhill-Carlton Shea Vineyard 2022, a complex and layered wine that is fresh and persistent with garden-like aromas of bright red berries mingling with notes of flowers and resinous herbs. The palate is fresh and juicy, with a taut and mineral-driven finish.

Purple Hands Winery, which also makes a wine from Shea Vineyard, excelled with their pinot noirs in 2023. "It was pretty balanced and we had a beautiful harvest,” Cody Wright, the founder and winemaker, said of the year. “We had wonderful acid retention and the flavors are really opulent. Our [2023] wines have a nice weight to them; like a delicate, pretty weight."

The spicy and concentrated Purple Hands Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Yamhill-Carlton Shea Vineyard 2023 has enticing aromas of pomegranates, dried spices like cinnamon and cardamom, toasted orange peel, purple plums and licorice, with silky tannins and a long, supple finish.

As for chardonnay, Kate Norris, the co-owner and co-winemaker alongside Thomas Monroe at Division wines, says it's "the story in Oregon right now." She believes that interest in the variety has surged in recent years thanks to an industry-wide commitment to climate-suitable clones, acid-driven picking decisions and reductive winemaking styles.

Monroe described the 2023 vintage as relatively trouble-free, with no frost, excessive rain or fire. "All in all, it was just a really successful vintage that made really nice, balanced wines,” he said.

If anything, the vintage accentuated their chardonnay house style, which leans more toward savory and flinty than fruity. The Division Chardonnay Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Royer Vineyard Quatre 2023 is a great example: mineral-driven with a compelling textural tension between resinousness and acidity.

We tasted the same vineyard-designated chardonnay from the previous vintage with Vincent Fritzsche, at his boutique winery outside the small town of Amity. The Vincent Chardonnay Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Royer Vineyard 2022 is a mineral-driven chardonnay that gains both richness and finesse from nearly three years on lees in neutral wood barrel, with a palate that shows salinity, layered texture and savory herbal notes in the finish.

A four-hour drive south of the Willamette Valley, Courtney tasted with two producers who have found success in a couple pockets of the Rogue Valley, a region more commonly associated with warm-climate Rhone and Spanish varieties.

At Irvine & Roberts, the standout was the Rogue Valley Estate Chardonnay 2023, a plush, fruit-forward expression with bright acidity and a rich texture with notes of pear, white peach, nectarine and mango with a round and juicy palate. At Domaine St. Laurent, their Pinot Noir Rogue Valley Block One 2023 – which we tasted with Alex St. Laurent on his grandfather's porch overlooking the family's cattle ranch and vineyard – is a really nice and enjoyable, lighter-bodied wine with aromas of chalk, orange peel, sour cherry, white mushroom, mint and thyme blossom.

– James Suckling, Aldo Fiordelli, Ryan Montgomery and Courtney Humiston 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.

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