June 2023 Tasting Report: Sonoma Sings, a Haul of Rieslings and Brilliance Down Under

We tasted nearly 3,000 wines in June as we head toward another record number of wines rated at JamesSuckling.com in a single year. Many of our top scorers came from California, where James managed to sneak in a short stay at his home in Napa before heading off to New York and then Italy.

James mainly focused on Sonoma’s 2021 vintage, which one of Sonoma’s top winemakers, Ted Lemon of Littorai Wines, called an “Alice in Wonderland season” because there were plentiful grapes even though it was the third year of drought. Still, James found some stunning chardonnays and pinot noirs when he visited with Lemon and other top wineries, including Paul Hobbs Wines and Williams Selyem, from the region.

The best pinot of the vintage, made by winemaker Justin Ennis, was a tiny production of some of the best parcels of the Joseph Phelps coastal vineyard near the town of Bodega Bay – the Joseph Phelps Pinot Noir Sonoma County Freestone Estate Proem No.2. And Lemon’s single-vineyard chardonnay from Charles Heintz Vineyard and pinot noir from The Haven Vineyard also shined.

Paul Hobbs, whose wines and vision stretch across the globe, gave us one of our top-rated pinots, the Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Katherine Lindsay Estate Cuvee Agustina 2021, and James rated a couple of notable mountain cabernets from the region: the Pym-Rae Napa Valley Tesseron Estate 2019 and Cornell Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County Commitment 2019.

Hobbs also gave us what was probably the best dry riesling of the 2021 vintage in Finger Lakes, New York, the Hillick & Hobbs Riesling Seneca Lake Estate Vineyard Dry 2021, which Senior Editor Stuart Pigott, who road-tripped to Finger Lakes, called “cool and sleek but remarkably clean and elegant for the vintage.”

Another standout riesling in Finger Lakes – in fact, the star of the 2020 vintage – was the intensely flinty Red Newt Cellars Riesling Finger Lakes The Knoll Lahoma Vineyards 2020. Stuart said this wine was a “career high point” for the winemaker, Kelby Russell, who has since moved on from Red Newt to start a new project, Apollo’s Praise winery.

And the best red of the vintage, Stuart said, was the Red Tail Ridge Pinot Noir Seneca Lake RTR Estate Vineyard 2020, with its “complex aromas of violets and spice, plus stacks of fine tannins that make the palate build to a serious crescendo at the super-long finish.”

In neighboring Pennsylvania, Stuart found some surprising dry whites, the most exciting of which was the Galen Glen Grüner Veltliner Lehigh Valley Stone Cellar 2022, made by the family team of winemaker Sarah Troxell, her daughter, Erin, who is the vineyard manager, and her husband, Galen, a former mechanical engineer. They were among the first producers in the United States to plant gruner veltliner back in 2003 and it is now the most important variety in their eight hectares of vineyards in Lehigh Valley.

EFFORTLESS FROM SPAIN

Spain and Italy comprised about two-thirds of the wines we tasted during June – 1,915, to be exact. Two of the highest rated from Spain were the Alto Horizonte Garnacha Sierra de Gredos El Cerro Brujo Viñas Viejas de Ávila 2020 the Gonzalez Byass Jerez Del Duque Vinum Optimum Rare Signatum Amontillado 30 Años NV.

The first, according to Senior Editor Zekun Shuai, is “an impressive and highly drinkable garnacha that oozes racy, red berry fruit” and whose “clarity and the nervy freshness … make it seem effortless.” The second, Zekun said, is “a tangy, intense yet nuanced amontillado with tons of flavor and salinity.”

Zekun also found a few exciting monastrells from Atlan & Artisan’s Epistem wines, an organically farmed project that focuses on monastrell and bobal made by Sebastian Keller and Phillippe Bramaz. Right at the top was the expansive, concentrated and structured Atlan & Artisan Monastrell Yecla Espernalas 2021 which comes from 60-year-old-plus vines grown on brown, calcareous, water-retentive soils that help retain freshness. And their 2020 Espernalas, Zekun said, is equally convincing, although it comes with a little less density and concentration but with more vibrancy and fluidity on the palate, making it attractive even at a young age.

In Italy, Tastings Editor Jo Cooke encountered two classy reds from the Binomio winery in the region of Abruzzo, the stunning Binomio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva 2019 and Binomio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Collezione Riserva 2017. Both wines come from a project between top Venetian winemaker Stefano Inama, who is best known for his Soave whites, and Sabatino Properzio of the renowned La Valentina winery in Abruzzo.

The Riserva 2019 is a nimble, just over medium-bodied red with a solid core of fruity, floral and mineral notes and a super-relaxed texture on the palate, and “may be the finest wine that these two wine wizards have made,” Jo said. The Collezione Riserva, meanwhile, is a “bolder rendering that is built to last, with a spicier and more licoricy character and more substantial tannin.”

A few Italian standouts also came from the country’s northern Trentino-Alto Adige region, including the beautifully perfumed and spicy Elena Walch Gewürztraminer Alto Adige Vigna Kastelaz 2021 from Elena Walch, who began making wines under her own label in the 1980s. The counterpoint to Walch’s gewurztraminer is a mineral and phenolic pinot grigio, the Alto Adige Vigna Castel Ringberg 2022, and her 2020 Riserva Chardonnay from the same vineyard “is intense and full-bodied and keeps giving with generous and persistent notes of lemon curd and apple crumble.”

Stuart uncovered even more great rieslings in his tastings of German and Austrian wines, with the breathtaking Nik Weis Riesling Mosel Goldtröpfchen Auslese 2021 the best of the bunch. This wine, Stuart said, was produced after a period when the Nik Weiss winery “didn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders.” But then along came Kai Hausen as the new winemaker in April 2019 and the narrative changed, with Weis finally partnered with someone in the cellar “whose ideas aligned with my own,” as he put it.

The two stunning rieslings Stuart found in Austria were the pristine and refreshing Domaene Roland Chan Riesling Wachau Ried Klaus Smaragd 2021 and rich and concentrated Domaene Roland Chan Riesling Wachau Ried Achleiten Smaragd 2021. “They are exactly what we expect from these two legendary vineyard sites of the commune of Weissenkirchen, the Klaus and Achleiten,” Stuart said.

And two wines of note we tasted from France were the Paul Jaboulet Aîné Hermitage La Chapelle 2016 and the 2009 Billecart-Salmon Champagne Cuvée Louis Salmon. The former is a cuvee of wines from various parts of the famed Hill of Hermitage and “a purer expression of Hermitage before the more muscular and concentrated 2018, ’19 and ’20 vintages,” while the latter is a serious blanc de blancs made from chardonnay parcels from the Cote des Blancs grand cru villages of Cramant, Chouilly and Mesnil-sur-Oger that is “still youthful and clearly has great potential for cellaring.”

A BRILLIANT RANGE DOWN UNDER

Finally, Senior Editor Ned Goodwin MW tasted his way through a few hundred bottles from Australia, focusing on the Hunter Valley and Grampians wine regions. He found  brilliance emerging from the iconic Hunter Valley winery Mount Pleasant under its new owners. Winemaker Adrian Sparks, he said, has returned their offerings “to a hearth of savory restraint, tannic exactitude, prodigious capacity for cellaring and mid-weighted drinkability – the Hunter Valley coda.”

The flagship of what Ned called a “brilliant range” is their Mount Pleasant Shiraz Hunter Valley Maurice O’Shea 2021, a cuvee Ned said is “arguably the finest wine I have tasted this year ­– from Australia or otherwise.”

And Ned received a swag of cases from some of the most well-respected producers in the Grampians ­– a cool-climate region in central western Victoria that offers fresh insights into the country’s greater wine narrative. The best of those cases naturally came from Best’s, one of the oldest family-owned, continually operated wineries in Australia.

“This is a vineyard par extraordinaire, containing everything from ondenc to cinsault,” Ned explained. “Magically, it contains what is ostensibly the oldest own-rootstock-plantings of pinot meunier in the world, dating from 1868.” And from those plantings came the beguiling Best’s Pinot Meunier Great Western Old Vine 2022. Ned compared it to the 1969 bottling, which he said was among the best wines he had ever tasted and “drank like an incantation of nebbiolo-like spindly tannins and aromas of campfire and sandalwood, melded with pinot noir’s carnal burr of wet forest floor and porcini.”

Another wine case Ned dug into was from The Story, a smaller operation in the Grampians whose The Story Grenache 2021 struck an epiphany with its brilliance: “Far from complex, its drinkability quotient is giddy, and best, its success challenges the precept of the ‘cool climate’ mantle, while auguring positively for a great future for this variety.”

We’re also auguring positively for a great future at JamesSuckling.com as we turn to the second half of the year and coming reports on Barolo and Barbaresco, Burgundy, Champagne and Portugal, among many other regions and countries. It’s going to be a fantastic and eclectic tasting adventure, so come along for the ride…

– Vince Morkri, Managing Editor

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