Going to 11 with Napa’s 2021, Plus Riesling Purity from the Nahe: Weekly Tasting Report (Nov 22-28)

It has been a while since I have given four wines perfect scores of 100 points and rated another dozen 99 points during a two-week tasting trip. I wasn’t counting the number of great wines I rated in Napa Valley last week, but many of them were incredible quality with pure and focused fruit framed with precise and defined tannins.

The harmony in most of the wines was very, very impressive, but at the same time there were some powerful and tannic wines that were equally breathtaking. And these wines had no sweetness or overtly saccharine natures to them. It was all about structure, and this highlighted the excellence of the 2021 vintage.

“You ever seen Spinal Tap?” Chris Cooney, the winemaker for Dana Estates, said when I asked him about 2021. “It’s like going to 11. Everything is intense. This is what’s so special about 2021. It’s not just fruit that is here. It’s not about the sweetness.” I rated both his Dana Estates Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Rutherford Helms Vineyard 2021 and Dana Estates Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley Howell Mountain Hershey Vineyard 2021 at 99 points.

You probably remember that the 2021 vintage was a severe drought year, which reduced grape crop levels. Most wineries I visited said they harvested between 10 percent and 30 percent fewer grapes, and what was picked usually showed small-sized berries with thick skins. This usually makes for very tannic wines, and yet the majority of the more than 1,100 2021 reds we rated from California this year have not shown austerity or too many tannins.

“I think tannins are more broad-shouldered than in some vintages, but they came across very fine,” said Duckhorn Vineyards winemaker Renee Ary. “I was very careful in 2021.  I watched my pump-overs and I kept temperatures down. I tried to be very mindful of the quality of the tannins.”

In fact, I was slightly concerned when I first started tasting 2021 Napa cabernets at the beginning of the year from barrel and bottle because I thought they might be extremely tannic and possibly out of balance because the lower juice-to-skin ratio in fermentation vats and the thickness of the grapes might mean very extracted tannins. However, this has not been the case with my tastings so far.

“2019 was cool but not too cool,” Ary added, “We didn’t have heat spikes. We could shop and bloc. It was easy and breezy. 2018 had more freshness. 2021 is a bridge between the two vintages. There is freshness and richness at the same.”

Another point winemakers make about 2021 is that wines made from single vineyards show their unique character, which indicates that the 2021 vintage was not an exaggerated growing season except for the lack of water during the summer.

“I particularly like 2021 after the 2020 vintage,” said Francoise Peschon, the winemaker for Vine Hill Ranch. “Since we are picking earlier and earlier, the wines show more of a sense of place, and they don’t have that heady quality. It all goes back to balance. It is the site, too. But if you keep your winemaking balanced, it is really beautiful in 2021. We want to make wines that we enjoy, wines that give pleasure and not just impact. Mission accomplished in 2021!”

Meanwhile, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott was in the Nahe region of Germany over the past week visiting with one of the country’s top under-the-radar winemakers, Jakob Schneider of the eponymous winery. Schneider has been churning out fantastic wines since the 2015 vintage, but how did he cope with the challenges of 2022, which combined a searing summer drought with a wet fall? His vineyards are nearly all in steep sites with stony soils that can't hold much water.

A quartet of his wines – two dry rieslings and two rieslings with natural grape sweetness – from the famous Hermannshohle vineyard that rated 95-points plus is as clear an answer to that question as you could get! And they aren’t the only stars in this stunning range. Even better, in spite of the extreme vintage all the wines have the purity and elegance we associate with this producer.

Sadly, the very best of these wines, the dry Jakob Schneider Riesling Nahe Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Über’m Häuschen Trocken 2022, is a single-barrel bottling and will be very hard to find. If you do stumble across it, be prepared to be reminded of an Alpine meadow on a summer’s day, as Stuart was. Hot on its heels is the Jakob Schneider Riesling Nahe Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Magnus Trocken 2022, with its ripe yellow fruits and fantastic freshness plus great spicy and mineral complexity. See the notes below for the rest of the good news.

Why haven’t many of you heard of Jakob Schneider before? Well, he’s not a winemakers who jets around the world. His wife, Laura, covers most of the promotional work, leaving Jakob to concentrate on the vineyards and cellar (though she also has a serious opinion about everything the winery does). The Schneiders have a tremendous respect for the Middle Nahe’s wine tradition, as you might expect for a family farm that decided to focus on wine way back in 1901, when mixed farming was still the norm. However, their wines also have a modern clarity and precision that come entirely naturally to them. And the prices remain very friendly for this exceptional quality!

CATCHING UP WITH A MODERN-DAY CLASSIC

Savagnin has an ignominious history in Australia. It was introduced around 1989 as albariño before genetic testing in 2009 indicated that Spanish authorities had supplied erroneous material to the Australians and the variety was none other than savagnin. Most Australians who had planted it simply ripped it up and licked their wounds. The more perspicacious, however, had other ideas.

Matt Campbell, the assistant winemaker at Crittenden Estate in Australia's Mornington Peninsula, had returned from the Jura – where savagnin is thought to have originated – at a propitious point between the French region’s fallow inauspiciousness and the incendiary fashionability that has made the likes of Jura producers Tissot and Ganevat common names in fine wine circles.

Crittenden Estate had retained its savagnin plantings and Campbell, with a handle on the potential for great wine rather than the bang-it-in-and-out style of innocuous dry white that those who had clung to their savagnin were making, furtively stuck a barrel behind closed doors. He left it under ullage, as with oxidative styles in the Jura, and pulled it out after a year or so with his typically laconic grin. The naturally occurring surface yeast known as flor had its way and a modern-day classic was born!

This wine style, defined by aldehydic complexities of curry powder, washed rind, chamomile and walnut husk over obvious fruit – and by phenolics as much as freshness – continues to elicit squawks from the jaded. Yet Senior Editor Ned Goodwin MW strongly suggests that the purview of Crittenden Estate Cri de Coeur savagnin is redefining what constitutes great wine, glimpsed through a more contemporary viewfinder. This week, Ned was fortunate enough to taste through a near-vertical of each vintage made.

The inaugural 2011 augurs for what is to come. Not more. The lathering of flor is gentler. There is more obvious primary fruit, concurring with head winemaker Rollo Crittenden’s exhortation that “we were so happy with what we had, that we just wanted to bottle it!” There was no 2012 made due to lousy conditions, but by 2013 this startling cuvee begins to hit a groove of cool climate fidelity, a saline wisp and a more confident embrace of flor’s complex inflections.

While there is an autolytic note of brulee to the wine, not dissimilar to aged Champagne, hints of curry powder and brown spice segue to a moreish nuttiness. The 2015 is perhaps the greatest triumph to date!  Coming from a warmer year, the wine boasts a panoply of mushroom broth, washed rind and curry powder, held together by what feels like a highly strung bow of freshness despite the wine's obvious heft. Umami in spades!

Ned thought that the 2016 and 2018 were brethren, each showcasing a rancio degree of complexity ­–  a je ne sais quoi note of walnut, blue cheese and polished timber – that is considered a high qualitative trait when it comes to oxidative styles of wine. The 2018, he said, was akin to “a precarious thrill ride of white knuckle intensity across the palate.”

In our Hong Kong office, Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt tasted Champagne Billecart-Salmon’s new releases with CEO Mathieu Roland-Billecart, including Le Clos St.-Hilaire Brut 2007, which will be launched in January. It’s made from a single parcel of pinot noir vines from a one-hectare walled plot in Mareuil-sur-Ay, pruned for lower yields and higher concentrations, completely vinified in oak barrels without malolactic conversion. The 2007 is tight and structured, with complex aromas ranging from pink flowers and fruit to spices and chalk.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2023

“I love 2007. The only weakness is that it is next to 2008,” said Roland-Billecart, comparing it to the excellent 1995 vintage, which preceded the celebrated 1996.

You’ll also find the latest iterations of their non-vintage blends below. Check out their Brut Sous Bois, which is also made from barrel-fermented base wine, including reserve wine from a solera system that goes back to 2006. It’s rich in flavor yet with a salty brightness. The Blanc de Blancs Brut NV, meanwhile, is 100 percent grand cru chardonnay from the Cote des Blancs, vinified in stainless steel, with excellent freshness and balance. And the next two releases of Les Rendez-Vous, N. 4 and Cinq, are exciting, small-production wines. N.4 is a 100 percent chardonnay from Mesnil-sur-Oger while Cinq is 100 percent pinot noir, both based on the 2015 vintage.

Keep an eye out, too, for the Louis Salmon Blanc de Blancs Brut 2012 and Elisabeth Salmon Brut Rosé 2012, which will be released in the spring of next year.

– James Suckling reported from Napa, California. Stuart Pigott, Ned Goodwin MW and Claire Nesbitt 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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