Great Napa Valley Reds Version 3.0, Plus Switching Back On to Silvaner: Weekly Tasting Report (Jan 24-30)

High scores for Californian reds top the list in this Weekly Tasting Report and it only serves to highlight the greatness of the 2021 vintage for the state. The best wines have incredible concentration and tannin tension without being heavy or overripe.

“Nature did it,” said Colgin winemaker Allison Tauziet, who received two 100-point ratings from James for her 2021 reds. “It was an early season and an early opportunity to retain a lot of great flavor. It has a real natural concentration.”

James pointed out that it was interesting how so many winemakers in Napa during his two-week trip in the valley use the word “concentration” to describe their 2021 reds because the drought conditions of the vintage reduced the number of grapes per vine as well as the size of the grapes. As a result, the wines were more aromatic and denser in body than some past recent top vintages, such as 2018 and 2019. But the top wines of the vintage are not heavy or overly high in alcohol like 2017 and 2015.

ALLISON TAUZIET ON NAPA’S 2021 VINTAGE

BEAULIEU VINEYARD'S TREVOR DURLING: IS 2021 BETTER THAN 2019?

“We are always looking for the beauty and freshness of the fruit but also the mineral and savory character of the wine,” Tauziet said. “The 2021 really offered that.”

She added: “2018 had so much freshness and savoriness and succulence. 2021 has all these things but a little more harmony at an early moment in the wine.”

The freshest and greatest red so far in our tastings of 2021 California has to be in this report, the Harlan Estate 2021. It’s crystalline in structure with a clarity and firmness that is a 3.0 rendition of a great Napa Valley red.

Owner Will Harlan admitted that the wine, and recent vintages, are lighter than some of the classic years of the 1990s and 2000s due to intentionally earlier harvests and honed winemaking, but “there is still something very Harlan about it," he said. "There is more precision than years ago. There is the common thread of forest floor and structure that is still there. We are making wines that are the most interesting and transparent from this place.”

James also rated the Promontory 2021 the same score as Harlan, but he described it as  “energized with pure, airy, bright fruit.” It also exhibits a 3.0 character for Napa reds to follow but with the mountain nature of the vineyards, perfectly polished tannins and lots of complex fruit and earth aromas and flavors.

Harlan’s Bond 2021s are almost as compelling in quality and offer similar transparency. Don’t miss the other top Napa reds at the top of the list, including those from Eisele Vineyard, Amici, Beaulieu Vineyard, David Arthur, OVID, Alpha Omega and axr.

The winemaker for axr, Jean Hoefliger, called 2021 “a legacy vintage” that has concentration but lots of acidity. “It is one those vintages that will carry for decades,” he said. “It really shows what Napa can do!”

Sonoma is doing a lot as well and even in an extremely hot year such as 2022. James thinks that it’s a golden moment for Sonoma, from the coast to Russian River to Alexander Valley. There are so many excellent site-specific whites and reds being made with character and uniqueness, he said.

Great examples are the recent releases from Carlo and Dante Mondavi at their winery, Raen. The two explained to James last week that they really fine-tuned their picking times in 2022, which was essential to maintain the nature and character of their special vineyards on the West Sonoma Coast. James was impressed, to say the least, with the wines.

“I concentrated on the tannins and everything but with low brix” said Carlo Mondavi, referring to potential alcohol. “Picking decisions were critical in 2022, just like 2017 – get it off the vine and get it into the cooler environment. 2022 is very similar to 2017 and 2015, and they will age forever.”

There also mini-verticals of different bottlings of Raen in this report. So check out how well Mondavi’s single-vineyard pinots age.

James also rated this year's release of Sassicaia, the 2021, and it was clear a step up from the 2020. It has more structure and freshness. The quality is up there with some of the best of recent years, but he is not sure if it is on the same stellar level as the 2019. Wait and see.

SWITCHING BACK ON TO SILVANER

Sometimes we hear the criticism that our really high scores are given to producers we visit, but if you look at what actually happens day-to-day, this is not the case. For example, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott was just wowed by a row of wines from the Luckert winery in Germany that he tasted at home.

When many readers see the notes and ratings for the 2022 vintage dry whites from Luckert they’re going to ask themselves why they never heard of this winery before. One reason is that historically, the region of Franken lagged behind regions like the Rheingau, Mosel and Nahe in building exports. Second, the signature grape variety of Franken is the humble silvaner, which a century ago was the workhorse of the German wine industry. Spoiled for choice, the cool young somms of Planet Wine never really switched on to silvaner. Despite the winemaking revolution in Franken that began in the 1990s, the international reputation of these wines is still of being round and earthy, which does not sound sexy.

The highest rated of these wines, the astonishing Luckert Silvaner Franken Creutz Trocken *** 2022, shows how wrongheaded the prejudices are. This wine, which comes from 100-year-old-plus vines (probably the oldest silvaner in the world) has enormous concentration and textural complexity with an aroma of orange blossom. The mind-glowingly long finish has extraordinary vitality and precision. This is a GG in all but name, but it’s also difficult to find due to the limited production.

The Luckert Silvaner Franken Sonnenberg Gelbkalk EL 2022 (EL stands for Erste Lage, like GG stands for Grosses Gewachs) will be easier to track down and is more moderate in price. Gelbkalk means “yellow chalk” – an exception to the white Triassic limestone that dominates in central Franken. And, yes, you can really taste that in this wine, which has stunning stone fruit and the ripest lemon aromas. But as you can read in the tasting notes below, the Luckert family has a very high strike rate. All their wines are made from organically farmed vineyards and are wild-fermented.

Another fascinating group of wines for Stuart were the gruner veltliners from the Zillinger winery in the Weinviertel (which literally means “wine quarter”) region of Austria. He feels that these wines are some of the most original expressions of the gruner veltliner grape he has ever encountered, and arguably the best Austrian natural wines.

The most exciting of them was the Zillinger Grüner Veltliner Austria Radikal 2021, which has rich dried pear, quince and herbal aromas wrapped around a serious tannin structure. All of the Zillinger wines have that firm core and have excellent aging potential as a result. They are all biodynamically grown and bottled unfiltered.

BEECHWORTH'S PLUSH CHARDONNAYS

Ned Goodwin MW continued his tasting of the wines of Beechworth, Australia, whose 130 hectares of vines are planted in the most continental of all of Australia’s viticultural zones, pitched in the foothills of the Australian Alps northeast of Melbourne.

Here, strong diurnal shifts placate the intense Australian sunshine and volcanic granite to friable shale at lower elevations, to facilitate acid retention across a panoply of quality varieties that include syrah and nebbiolo. For many collectors, however, chardonnay is the apotheosis of fruit intensity and mineral architecture – pungent and forceful, demarcating the very best expressions.

The Beechworth chardonnays Ned tasted, however, were less reductive, more concentrated and plusher of feel than the more linear Australian norm. “And for the better!”, Ned noted, suggesting that while reduction can impart a sense of tension, it can also smother the fruit and parlay an overt abstemiousness. Wine’s foremost virtue is surely the pleasure it brings, and in Beechworth chardonnay there is an abundance.

Ned said he was smitten by the Domenica Chardonnay Beechworth 2022, which is “nervous in the mouth while suitably open-knit enough to breach already,” and also enjoyed the Traviarti and its “strut of generosity.” And both the A. Rodda chardonnays rated for this report are noteworthy, although they are for “acid hounds,” Ned said, needing considerable bottle age to achieve further poise.

The Fighting Gully Road Chardonnay Beechworth Smiths Vineyard 2022, meanwhile, shows wonderful phenolics over shrill acidity with toasted hazelnut, marzipan and truffle salt, as another generous style. The Piano Piano Chardonnay Beechworth Sophie's Block 2022, too, is worthy of a spot in your cellar, and yet it was the Savaterre 2022, an outlier in terms of being the most reductive of all, that impressed across a two-day tasting window. "It became better with air as the surfeit of extract unravelled across pithy stone fruits, anise, glazed quince and citrus marmalade to thrilling length," Ned said.

– James Suckling, Stuart Pigott and Ned Goodwin MW 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.

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.