December 2023 Tasting Report: Bordeaux Overachieves, Napa Precision and Fireworks from Germany

Our final tasting month of the year at JamesSuckling.com comprised 3,130 wines, with France and the U.S. giving us a whopping 1,456 and 781 bottles, respectively, and putting our final tally for the year at about 40,000 wines tasted. That’s a record for us, and we’ll break down the details in a separate story to come.

Of the wines from France, 955 were from Bordeaux, and most of those were from the 2021 vintage. Although none were at the top of our ratings for the month, they were largely outstanding wines, which was somewhat surprising given the challenges in the vineyards that year, which included spring frosts, mildew, botrytis, torrential rains, a shortage of sunlight and mild temperatures during key months in the summer.

Still, they show a freshness and balance overall, with refined – if not superior – tannins and an overall subtle character. Many in the 95- to 96-point category make for excellent early drinking. There are also some 95-point reds from favorite chateaus such as Lynch-Bages, Rauzan Segla, and Pape-Clement that highlight how the Left Bank could make some top quality wines in 2021, as well as some highly rated Bordeaux Right Bank wines with merlot from the likes of Belair-Monage, Canon, Croix de Labrie, La Fleur-Petrus, Rocheyron, Trotanoy and Valandraud that prove the vintage’s worth. Check out the Château Canon St.-Emilion 2021 and Château La Fleur-Pétrus Pomerol 2021 as terrific examples.

One medium-bodied red from 2021 that exemplifies the merits of a cool and wet year is the Château La Violette Pomerol 2021. It shows a bit more heft, with a refined hint of oak, imparting a sophisticated touch reminiscent of cigar boxes and dark chocolate. It’s one of the few Bordeaux reds that exhibits promising aging potential, making it a 2021 Pomerol worth cellaring for a decade, if not more.

Dry and sweet whites from Bordeaux’s 2021 vintage are also pretty sensational, such as those from Cos d’Estournel and Pape-Clement as well as Larrivet-Haut-Brion. These are solid, structured whites that Bordeaux delivers in cooler years.

Champagnes were very much on order in our December tastings as well. From Champagne Philipponnat came the latest iteration of Clos des Goisses, which is a blend of 71 percent pinot noir and 29 percent chardonnay. It’s a more elegant Clos des Goisses, with richness and complex aromas of pastries and spiced fruit, but sleek and fresh. Their 2012 Les Cintres, meanwhile, is intense, deep and structured, while their latest L.V. (long vieillissement) Clos des Goisses, from 1998, is now being released 25 years after the vintage. It was disgorged earlier this year and is drinking beautifully with complex honey, earthy and salty undertones to the dried fruit.

And Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted a bunch of Champagnes that highlighted the still frequently untapped potential of the pinot meunier grape, including the Gilles Mansard Champagne Clos de Cerseuil 100% Meunier Brut 2015, whose label loudly declares what it is: proof of pinot meunier’s potential for greatness. It has excellent concentration and elegance with an extremely long, delicate finish. And for a bone-dry Champagne experience with a meunier vibe, try the Gounel + Lassalle Champagne Premier Cru Esprit Voyager Brut Nature NV, a pinot meunier-based blend (58 percent, plus 25 percent pinot noir and 17 percent chardonnay) that has a stunningly expressive nose of red berries, bergamot and brioche.

Most of the wines we tasted from the U.S. were from California’s 2021 and 2020 vintages. Overall, some of the top 2021 California reds we rated spotlight the great vineyards of Napa Valley and elsewhere in the state, with the Inglenook Napa Valley Rutherford Rubicon 2021 and La Jota Vineyard Co. Merlot Napa Valley Howell Mountain W.S. Keyes Vineyard 2021 being prime examples.

Generally, such wines come with more precision and less density, and are being made by a new generation of winemakers aiming for offerings that are lighter on their feet.

Benoit Touquette of Realm and Fait-Main admitted the vintage “gave the quality to the wines,” but added that they also worked the wines better. “The only change from past years was the extraction in 2021.  “We were really careful,” he said. “We really had tension in the wines and 2021s should do really well.”

Our top-rated 2021 during the month was the full-bodied Quintessa Napa Valley Rutherford 2021, whose chewy and juicy tannins in the majority cabernet sauvignon blend are long and very subtle.

The 2020s were not made at the normal level due to the fires during the growing season, but some wineries still had some impressive offerings, such as Beaulieu Vineyard, whose winemaker Trevor Durling said “they had very nice stuff” at the beginning of the harvest and before the second fire.

We also dipped into some excellent chardonnays from Oregon, including those from 00 Wines, whose owners, Chris and Kathryn Hermann, make Burgundy-inspired chards with all the minerality, reductive character and tight and subtly ripened fruit that reminds James of whites from Ramonet in the 1980s.

Their top chardonnays – the 00 Wines Chardonnay Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Richard Hermann Cuvée 2021 and 00 Wines Chardonnay Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Seven Springs 2021 – are from single vineyards and only a few barrels are made, while their chardonnay blends from different sites, called VGW for Very Good White and EGW for Exceptionally Good White, are easier to find in the market.

'A FIREWORKS DISPLAY OF GREAT WINES'

In Germany’s Rheingau region, Stuart had “one of the most exciting tastings he can remember ever experiencing. This happened at the von Oetinger winery, with its  “fireworks display of great wines” from Achim von Oetinger and his right-hand man, Lutz Loosen. At the very top was our only 100-point wine from the month, the von Oetinger Riesling Rheingau Am Hoen Reyn Trocken (Auction Wine) 2020, with its spot-on balance despite gigantic structure, as well as a “totally mind-blowing finish. The spectacular von Oetinger Riesling Rheingau Marcobrunn GG 2022, meanwhile, “fully lives up to the legend of this vineyard site, and it was hard to imagine how a dry white wine could be more concentrated than this,” Stuart said.

Some 2021 vintage single-vineyard chardonnays and weissburgunders (pinot blancs) from Fritz Wassmer also stood out, with Stuart’s top pick from the bunch being the Fritz Wassmer Chardonnay Baden Schlossberg Staufen 2021, which has a terrific interplay of creaminess and stony minerality. And in South Baden, Stuart found the enormously concentrated and energetic Bernhard Huber Chardonnay Baden Schlossberg GG 2021 – an essence of the limestone soil from the precipitously steep Schlossberg site. Winemaker Julian Huber, the son of the deceased founder, also amazed with the Bernhard Huber Spätburgunder Baden Schlossberg GG 2021, an incredibly racy pinot noir with mind-blowing minerality.

Two other pinot noirs from the region’s 2020 vintage worth mentioning are the Salwey Spätburgunder Baden Kirchberg GG 2020, for its stunning nose of ripe cherries, compact fine tannins and vitality that pushes the finish in the direction of eternity, and the Karl H. Johner Spätburgunder Baden SJ 2018 – “proof that even in the hottest year ever recoded it was possible to marry wines with great delicacy and finesse as well as the high physiological ripeness and mellowness typical of 2018 right across Northern Europe.

We found a few other compelling wines from Europe, including many of the 2019 Brunello di Montalcino James tasted. He said the vintage made the best Brunellos since 2016 and show an underlying elegance with serious structure.

The single-vineyard 2019 Brunellos are especially distinctive, showing their provenance and character, including those from Corte Pavone, Pieve Santa Restituta and Sesta di Sopra.

Out of Spain, we encountered the Valenciso Rioja Reserva 2018, which presents a more refined expression of Rioja, with its graphite and pencil shaving characteristics bringing thoughts of layered, cabernet/merlot-based Bordeaux wines, and we also rated a few sparkling wines from England’s Roebuck Estates that impressed.

The soils in Roebuck’s vineyards are a mixture of chalk, clay, sand and loam, and so are similar to those found in Champagne, and the long, cool growing season there also suited for slow flavor accumulation in their chardonnay, pinot noir and meunier grapes. Their cuvees, which are blends of all three varieties, feature the sleek and biscuity the 2016 and  the richer 2017, while their Roebuck Estates Sussex Blanc de Noirs 2015 is a pure pinot noir from a mix of Burgundian and Champenois clones planted on their clay-rich vineyard, Roman Villa.

– Vince Morkri, Managing Editor

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