July 2021 Tasting Report: Into High Gear

We are tasting between 500 and 800 wines every week at the moment, and we compile our findings into a Weekly Tasting Report. We don’t think any other wine media organization is publishing so many new tasting notes so quickly. Many of the ratings we publish are for wines tasted just the previous day! And because so many of the wines we taste are the latest releases, often not yet available in the market, this ensures that all Premium Subscribers of JamesSuckling.com (who get access to the latest wine scores and tastings notes) are among the first to learn about the newest wines.

We are now also collating all the ratings published in a month in one large single report for your convenience, too. You can read about the wines below, and subscribers can access the scores and tasting notes in the ratings list at the bottom of this article.

We published a record high of 2,918 wine ratings in July, from 12 countries. Here’s how the tastings broke down (you can click “sort by” in the notes search engine below to search by each individual country):

Australia – 137
Chile – 5
China – 34
France – 282 (Bordeaux: 11; Burgundy 239: Champagne: 9; Rhone Valley: 10; and others)
Germany – 482 (Franken: 73; Mosel 178; Nahe: 78 Pfalz: 124; and others)
Israel – 31
Italy – 1361 (Northeast: 78; Piedmont: 109; Sicily: 32; Tuscany: 784; Veneto: 142; and others)
New Zealand – 21
Portugal – 18
South Africa – 10
Spain – 10
United States – 528 (California: 22; Washington: 11; Oregon: 495)

If you were looking for two reference points for fine wine this year, we found them when we kicked off our July tastings: the Maximin Grünhaus (von Schubert) Riesling Mosel Herrenberg Trockenbeerenauslese Nr. 221 (Auction wine) 2018, from Germany and Italy’s iconic Amarone, Romano Dal Forno Amarone della Valpolicella Monte Lodoletta 2015. Both were what our tasting team referred to as “Wow!” wines, and they were joined in that dimension by Tuscany’s Tenuta Sette Ponti Toscana Oreno 2019, which showed off the incredible quality of merlot in the region of Valdarno di Sopra.

Dal Forno impressed not only with its bold and focused Amarone, but also with its Valpolicella, which come from the same vineyards although from younger vines. “The Amarone is sourced from the best crus and the oldest vineyard plots, with an average age of 20 to 25 years,” explained Marco Dal Forno, who runs the estate. “The Valpolicella comes from the same vineyard areas, but we don’t regard it as a second wine,” he said. “We purposefully try to make our wines unique, so that in any blind tastings people can identify our wines."

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott found more than a few sleek and crisp dry rieslings from the 2020 vintage in Mosel, although he thought they were less consistently impressive than the 2019s, and Contributing Editor Nick Stock tasted a number of Australian wines, with some high scores going to the old-vine shiraz of Kaesler in the Barossa Valley, which Nick said showed fresh and vivid character now that they had aged. Nick was also at the unveiling of the annual Penfolds collection outside of Adelaide, but it wasn’t a new wine that surprised him, it was the retasting of the Penfolds Shiraz South Australia Bin 95 Grange 2010. Out of the new releases, he especially liked the Penfolds Shiraz South Australia St. Henri 2018, calling it “long and captivating.”

BRANCAIA 2018 AND 2019: A chat with winemaker Barbara Widmer.

HIRSCH VINEYARDS 2019: A tasting with Jasmine Hirsch and Michael Cruse.

We rated hundreds of bottles of Tuscan wines during the month, and more than a few impressed – including the 30^th anniversary super Tuscan red, the Brancaia Toscana Il Blu 2018, as well as the Inama Soave Classico Foscarino I Palchi Grande Cuvée 2019.

James said the Brancaia II Blu – one of his longtime favorites – “seems to be going from strength to strength, with more integrated tannins and finesse like in the 2018,” and showed “finesse and harmony.” Brancaia’s Barbara Widmer explained that a change toward using more merlot in the blend (now at 80 percent, with 10 percent sangiovese and 10 percent cabernet sauvignon), helped elevate the wine.

Another Tuscan wine surprised us by taking its normal fullness and richness to another level. The Inama Soave Classico Foscarino I Palchi Grande Cuvée 2019 is made from a selection of old vines on the slopes of the ancient Foscarino volcano, and Tasting Editor Jo Cooke called the mineral character in the wine “incredible” from nose to finish.

WEST COAST WONDERS

Pivoting to the West Coast of the United States, we found similar excellence in the 2018 and 2019 vintages from Oregon, which is coming into its own by making wines that really distinguish it from California. Its consistent production of pinot noir is especially notable, and most of the bottles from the state’s producer we ranked rate in the range of 90 to 92 points. Chardonnay from the state seems to have an even slightly higher average quality.

Pinot noir from the Sonoma Coast also rated highly in our tastings, especially Hirsch Vineyards’ Pinot Noir Sonoma County Sonoma Coast West Ridge 2019 and Pinot Noir Sonoma County Sonoma Coast Block 8 2019. James thinks the best of the Sonoma wines will eventually be seen in the same vein as Burgundy, Adelaide Hills, Central Otago and other great regions outside of the United States.

Stuart was busy during the month rating Israeli wines, and said he was “seriously amazed by what rapid progress the leading winemakers of this Eastern Mediterranean country have made since my first tasting trip there in the fall of 2014.” His two highest-rated wines from Israel, the 2018 Grand Vin from Domaine du Castel and the 2018 red from Razi’el, taste radically different, although both were made by the same winemaker: Eli-Gilbert Ben-Zaken.

Burgundy was also on Stuart’s schedule – we sent him to Beaune for a week to taste the recent vintage in bottle from top negociants – and after rating a few hundred bottles, his conclusion was that 2019 was “a very special vintage” for the region and that if you want to get the top whites from Burgundy, “you need to be fast!”

“In 2019 it didn’t matter whether your vineyards were in the Cote de Beaune, Cote de Nuits or somewhere else; whether your focus was on chardonnay or pinot noir; or if a vineyard site had deep soils or was on more stony ground – exceptional quality was possible, as long as you didn’t screw up by picking too late or make other basic mistakes,” Stuart said.

SETTING THE STANDARD

From New Zealand, our tastings included a few from a fantastic quality producer: Puriri Hills, whose wines are beautifully resolved and vivid, and the Bordeaux blends are not to be missed if you can find them.

We also gave only our second perfect score ever to a New Zealand wine, in this case the Kumeu River Chardonnay Kumeu Mate’s Vineyard 2020. “They have set the standard for New Zealand chardonnay,” said Nick, who raved about all the 2020 Kumeu River Chardonnays he tasted.

In all, July was our biggest tasting month ever, and you can expect more of the same as we work our way through the world’s great winegrowing countries and regions to meet our goal of tasting 25,000 wines in total by the end of the year.

You can read the full tasting notes for all the wines we tried in July in the list below.

– Vincent Morkri

Note: You can sort the wines below by country, vintage, score, and alphabetically by winery name, and can search for specific wines in the search bar.