Mouton Rothschild’s Shining 2019 Star and Dr. Heger’s Rising Spatburgunders: Weekly Tasting Report (Jan 18-24)

The outstanding 2019 vintage in Bordeaux is the star of this report covering the hundreds of wines we rated over the last week, but we also tasted some top bottles from Napa Valley, Baden, Barolo and even Switzerland.

The best wine of our tastings was clearly the Mouton Rothschild Pauillac, and it illustrates how the best terroirs of Bordeaux made the best wines in 2019. The vintage had some tricky parts to it, particularly a few days of strong rainfall at the end of July and the end of September and the hot and dry weather in between.

“2018 was more straightforward,” said Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy, the technical director of Mouton Rothschild. “You knew exactly what to do and when to do it. It was more obvious on the ground to make decisions. But 2019 was not difficult either if you were in the fields and you knew what was happening. You could make proper decisions at every stage of the process.”

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2021

THE BEST OF BORDEAUX: Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy of Chateau Mouton Rothschild discusses how 2019 compares with previous vintages.

'PRECISE VINTAGE': Alexander van Beek of Chateau Giscours talks about how the 2019 vintage tastes now that it's in bottle.

Most producers I interviewed by Zoom, so far, say that that the intense July showers really helped their vines through the hot and dry weather of the summer. The best soils had the capacity to maintain the needed moisture, whether they were composed of limestone or clay and gravel. The 2019 vintage was more uncertain than many think. From the third week of June onward it was very hot and dry, except for those couple of days of precipitation mentioned.

“It was only 31 centimeters of rain at the end of July,” said Danjoy. “But that was a relief for the vines. It was perfect to start verasion [when the color of the grapes changes to black].”

Danjoy also mentioned that the rain at the end of September, about the same amount as end of July, also helped revive the vines because grapes were starting to dehydrate. “We picked the merlots at that point,” he said, adding that they waited after the quick rains for the cabernets to better ripen. He also pointed out that the longer ripening for the cabernets gave them finer tannins. “We could wait for their ripening to a perfect condition.”

The 2019s definitely show finer tannins across the board compared with the slightly more opulent 2018s. The best wines also seem more typical for their appellations and specific sites because of their slightly lower alcohol and fresher acidities. The wines are also more attractive at this young stage than the 2018s with more floral and blue fruit character and more finesse in general. Comparing to more recent vintages, they look more like 2015, which are beautiful today to drink with lots of perfume and beautiful freshness and richness at the same time, yet they will age wonderfully at the same time.

Some of the other well-known names in Bordeaux with high ratings in this report include Canon La Gaffeliere, Clinet, Montrose, Pape Clement, Pavie Decesse, Pichon Lalande, Rocheyron and Valandraud. I am still thinking that 2019 is a Right Bank year but I like many excellent Left Bank wines from the top names. I noticed that the quality was much more variable with lesser names in lesser appellations where larger crops and September rains may have affected their quality in 2019.

It was interesting to taste some 2019 reds from Napa Valley on the same day or the day after rating 2019s from Bordeaux. Obviously, they had much more fruit, but they still seemed to hold freshness and tension for the region. You probably already know that 2019 is another excellent vintage after 2018 but they have a little more fruit in character. The lineup of reds from Alpha Omega in this report that I rated a few days ago highlights this, where the wines have plenty of blue fruits and black berries as well as firm and tensioned tannins.  The 2019 cabernet sauvignon from Oakville’s single vineyard, Tench Vineyard, was my favorite.

READ MORE: TOP 100 VALUE WINES OF 2021 ($35 OR LESS!)

STANDOUT SPATBURGUNDERS

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott was certainly raving about the wines from Dr. Heger, which is now owned by Joachim Heger – one of Baden’s dry wine masters. His 2019 Schlossberg spatburgunder was right up at the same level of quality as the best of Bordeaux in this report. Stuart has known Joachim Heger since the early 1990s and he was always impressed with his whites, but in recent years the pinot noirs, or spatburgunders, have really stood out to him.

“During the last years he did a great deal of work on refining their tannins and retaining a freshness that makes the wines bright as well as concentrated, giving them excellent aging potential,” Stuart wrote me in an email yesterday. “The 2018 and 2019 spatburgunders are his best to date, no doubt also due to the influence of his daughter Rebecca, who joined him in the winery.”

I was happy to see that Stuart also rated wines from Switzerland’s Gantenbein, which is making some of the best pinot noirs in the country, including the Gantenbein Pinot Noir Graubünden 2019. He gave it a great score and commented, “hang on to your hat and open your mind for this extraordinary pinot noir.” It’s hard to find and rather expensive, but worth trying out.

Meanwhile, Tasting Editor Jo Cooke is working his way through hundreds of 2018 Barolos at the moment, and although he is finding mostly outstanding wines, he can’t help but feel slightly let down after the beautiful trilogy of vintages that came before it: 2015, 2016 and 2017. The 2018 vintage was marked by rain during most of the growing season as well as high grape production. Most of the wines are clearly less concentrated and structured than the three precedent years, but they will provide outstanding early drinking. You can enjoy them while you wait for the trilogy. This is a year when those who worked the best in their vineyards and cellars made the best wines.

Lots of top great wines in this report this week and more to come.

– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor

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.