Napa’s Beaulieu Vineyard Strikes Again, plus Coombsville’s Cool Allure: Weekly Tasting Report (April 27-May 3)

This report includes a very special wine – the Beaulieu Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Georges de Latour Private Reserve 2019. Its pedigree in Napa Valley is legendary. It was first produced in the 1936 vintage and it was arguably the first great wine of the United States.

Often simply called the BV Private Reserve, this wine also holds a special place in my heart because it was one of the favorite wines of my late father, John Suckling. I remember my dad drinking the wine often in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He loved the 1958, 1962 and 1964. When I joined the American wine magazine The Wine Spectator in December 1981, my father gave me a bottle of the 1962 BV Private Reserve from his cellar and said: “Jimmy, go home and drink this and think about what you are drinking. You will understand what great wine is about after you do that.”

The fact that he was a collector and drinker of top Bordeaux at the time only added credence to his words. And, of course, I followed his instructions and still remember the balance and structure of the ’62 BV. The wine was so filigree in nature with layers of fine tannins and complex aromas and flavors of currants, tobacco and mahogany.

I had some of the same sensations tasting the 2019 last week with BV winemaker Trevor Durling. The young wine is structured and racy with fabulous intensity and length, but it’s a clear refitting and upgrade from the slightly big and overdone bottlings of the recent past. Durling said he has been working toward a more “refined” and “drinkable” BV Private Reserve in recent years to honor the great bottlings of the 1960s and 1970s. He certainly achieved this with the incredible, and perfect, 2019. I’m calling it “the new 1974 Georges de Latour,” which was a legend.

READ MORE: OUR TOP 100 WINES OF 2021

Another perfect wine in this report is the Paolo Scavino Barolo Rocche dell'Annunziata Riserva 2016. Tasting Editor Jo Cooke rated it, and it reminded me of visiting the vineyard back in the 1990s together when we were working for The Wine Spectator. We were with the then winemaker and owner, Enrico Scavino, and he explained that fine-tuning the canopy of the leaves to protect the grapes from the sun was the key to the great quality of the fruit he pulled out there. It was apparently the same in the great vintage of 2016. I like how the 2016 is already approachable but will age for decades ahead. Check out the tasting note.

The two tiny-production, super-quality pinot noirs from Joseph Phelps Freestone Estate are almost equally compelling in quality in the 2019, the most recent release. The reds come from parcels in the Occidental-Freestone area on the West Sonoma Coast, which I believe is one of the best regions for pinot noir in the United States.

Both the Joseph Phelps Pinot Noir Sonoma County Sonoma Coast Freestone Estate Proem No.1 2019 and Joseph Phelps Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast Freestone Estate Proem No.3 2019 were rated the same – check out the scores and notes below. They are only the second releases of these wines, which continue to amaze us with their quality.

I also tasted a range of small-production wines from winemaker Aaron Pott in St. Helena, including the tiny and superb St. Helena wine of Seven Stones, but also Greer, Perliss, Sigma, Fe, Blackbird Vineyards and his very own Aaron & Claire Pott and Daughters. Pott's wines have a real sense of place and intrinsic personality that highlight his obvious talent of not putting himself in the wine – just the character of the estate’s vineyards. When Pott speaks of wine, he does with a dutiful enthusiasm to his admiration for some of the great vineyards of France, such as Troplong Mondot, where he worked in the 1990s.

Finally, I was happy to run into Paul Lato at the Hospice du Rhone event in Paso Robles a couple of weeks ago. He’s a talented and warm winemaker from the Central Coast who makes fantastic chardonnays, pinots, grenaches and syrahs. I lost touch with his work about six years ago and was stoked to rekindle my relationship with the man and his deft and gentle hand for winemaking. I rated seven of his wines here.

The Etude Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Coombsville 2019 is another wine to check out in this report and highlights my love for the appellation. I like to call Coombsville the “Pauillac” of Napa Valley because the cabernet sauvignons from here have a distinctly blue-fruited character with blackcurrants and graphite as well as lead pencil undertones. It’s just like what you get in great cabernet-based wines from the famous northern appellation of Bordeaux’s Pauillac.

Coombsville comprises about 1,000 acres of vineyards and it’s not all cabernet sauvignon. It can grow just about anything, from chardonnay to merlot. But it’s clearly cabernet sauvignon that flourishes here and makes excellent wines. It’s one of the coolest appellations in Napa because of its close proximity to the San Francisco Bay. Grape growers often pick cabernet three weeks later than their counterparts in more northern parts of Napa, such as St Helena or Calistoga. The appellation was officially recognized by the U.S. government at the beginning of 2012, but it has been growing wine grapes since the 1870s.

I am flying to Bordeaux in a couple of days to taste 2021 from barrel and will report back in a couple of special weekly reports. I hear positive things despite the difficulty with the growing season. We will see. It will be my 40^th year covering en primeur, or futures, in Bordeaux. Stay tuned.

– 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.