Napa’s Ripe and Delicious Reds, Plus Redefining Beaujolais: Weekly Tasting Report (July 10-16)

The Stagecoach Vineyard on a mountain plateau overlooking Napa Valley has been a key source for Pahlmeyer winery’s lavish and powerful wines since 2004, and the connection has only grown stronger since E. & J. Gallo took over the ownership of both. Executive Editor Jim Gordon got a close look at the sprawling, boulder-strewn vineyard with winemaker Katie Vogt this past week and tasted through the current lineup of mostly 2021 reds.

Pahlmeyer’s top-tier Bordeaux-style reds and a huge, layered chardonnay received the top scores, but every offering – from the less-expensive Jayson wines on up – was impressive, ripe and delicious.

Proving again that Carneros is not the only place for great chardonnay in Napa, the Pahlmeyer Chardonnay Napa Valley Savoir Faire 2021 is spectacular, with toasted oak, caramel and poached pear flavors and a touch of flinty reduction on the finish that keeps it from going over the top in opulence. Grapes for this beauty come from old Wente clone vines at Stagecoach, where the elevation is above 1,500 feet (457 meters), and from the same clone at Waters Vineyard nearby on Atlas Peak, which is also several hundred feet above the valley floor.

Two of the reds earned nearly perfect scores. The 100 percent cabernet sauvignon Pahlmeyer Napa Valley Piece de Resistance 2021 is stunning, creamy and fresh, while their cabernet franc-based blend, the Pahlmeyer Napa Valley Raison d’Etre 2021, shows the ripeness of blueberry syrup and the texture of velvet. It’s the first year Raison d’Etre has been led by cabernet franc.

“Everything is on level 11 for 2021,” Vogt said. “Everything is volume up: intensity, tannin and acidity.” This applies to Pahlmeyer’s three merlots as well. Most impressive was the Pahlmeyer Merlot Napa Valley 2021, which could convert any merlot skeptic into a fan. Also worth the investment in pleasure is the intense, structured and age-worthy merlot-based Pahlmeyer Napa Valley Right Bank Blend 2021, which the winery had not produced since 2009.

Several other highlights from California came from Twomey Cellars, the pinot noir-focused winery founded by the Duncan family of Silver Oak. Winemaker Justin Hirigoyen’s top-rated wine is the Twomey Pinot Noir Anderson Valley Monument Tree Vineyard 2021. It is savory, complex, cassis-scented and memorable.

REDEFINING BEAUJOLAIS

Although lots of Beaujolais red wines are still bottled within half a year, an increasing number of producers give their single-vineyard wines the same 18 months or so in barrel that top red Rhone or Burgundy wines get.

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott bumped into a handful of these wines that were stunning, one of which stood out as a great masterpiece of this category: Les Héritiers Saint-Genys Morgon aux Charmes 2022. It has a breathtakingly deep, fresh and savory nose plus gigantic concentration of black cherry and black raspberry fruit and a mineral finish that Stuart described as being “as long as the universe is wide.”

Hot on its heels, with a more cool and restrained personality, is Les Héritiers Saint-Genys Morgon en Ruyère 2022. Sleek and highly structured, it has mouth-filling mulberry fruit, very fine tannins and an intense minerality that turns the finish into a fireworks display. These two great wines are delicious now but have enormous aging potential.

One unusual thing about the wines is that owner Patrice du Jeu and his team matured them in their cellar in Chassagne-Montrachet. They’ve  been making this sort of Beaujolais for some years, but for Philippe Pascal and Guillaume Marko at Domaine Mont Bessay, 2022 was just their second vintage. Regular readers will recognize that they are also the core team at Domaine du Cellier aux Moins in Givry, Burgundy. But they now also belong in the top league of Beaujolais thanks to the new vintage at their winery in Julienas, an under-the-radar member of the region’s club of 10 cru appellations.

The Domaine Mont Bessay Juliénas en Bessay 2022 is sleek and concentrated with a wonderful aroma of violets. The finish is simultaneously structured, silky and elegant. It comes from a vineyard 450 meters above sea level with pink granite soil. There’s quite a contrast between it and the Domaine Bessay Juliénas Les Quatre Cerisiers 2022, which is more vibrant with notes of cassis and violets. It is very focused, pure and precise.

There was an even bigger contrast between these new-style Beaujolais wines and those Stuart tasted when he visited the German wine region of Wurttemberg, which lies around the city of Stuttgart, the home of automaker Mercedes-Benz. Wurttemberg still struggles for international recognition because it was serving only a local market for such a long period of time, which meant that you had to travel there to find out what was possible in this warm and geologically complex region.

READ MORE BEAUJOLAIS ANNUAL REPORT: TAKING GAMAY TO THE LIMIT

The 75th anniversary of the founding of the Karl Haidle winery in the town of Stetten in the Remstal subregion was celebrated with vertical tastings of red and dry white wines. The young winemaker Moritz Haidle, who took over the cellar with the 2014 vintage, was himself stunned by the Karl Haidle Riesling Württemberg Stettener Pfeffer Natur 1964. It was extremely youthful at 60 years of age with excellent grapefruit and bergamot freshness. It actually expanded in the glass, gaining peach, apricot and almond aromas! 1964 was the second vintage that Moritz Haidle's father, Hans, made.

Among the reds, the most exciting wine was one of the youngest. The Karl Haidle Lemberger Württemberg Berge GG 2020 really shows how much Haidle and his generation of winemakers have learned about their craft over the last decade. It is a compelling and complex lemberger (the German name for the grape the Austrians call blaufrankisch and the Hungarians call kekfrankos) with dark, savory and smoky aromas and great underlying blueberry and elderberry fruit. The plush tannins are wrapped in a blanket of delicate sweetness. This wine is a current release and Haidle does export it.

Stuart also tasted a world-class sparkling wine in Wurttemberg, the Aldinger Sekt Württemberg Brut Nature 2017, which is just about to be released. It has spectacular aromatic complexity with aromas of yellow apple, dried pear, brioche, grilled baguette, red berries and candied citrus. The mouth-filling creaminess is beautifully balanced by the chalky freshness and tingling very fine mousse at the fabulously elegant finish.

Aldinger’s winemaker, Matthias Aldinger, also showed his best dry riesling to date, the Aldinger Riesling Württemberg Pulvermächer GG 2022, which is just the third vintage of this limited-production wine. It is breathtakingly vibrant and concentrated with stone fruit, wild herb, fennel and anise aromas. It’s medium-bodied but has a very compact focus and a terrific mineral drive at the very long finish.

Matthias Aldinger is also a chardonnay freak and scored a bullseye in that category, too, with the Aldinger Chardonnay Württemberg Untertürkheimer Gips EL 2022, which has almost perfect balance, terrific concentration and finesse. It has just 12.5 percent alcohol and should excite fans of high-end Chablis. This vineyard site actually overlooks the main production plant of Mercedes-Benz!

Another Wurttemberg winemaker, Felix Adelmann, makes of slew of wines with strong personalities. None of these were more striking for Stuart than quartet of excellent natural wines Adelmann presented to Stuart in the garden of the Schaubeck castle, where he lives. The Graf Adelmann Lemberger Württemberg Garage 2018 joyfully smashes the conventional frame for this variety in the region. It is sweet and fragrant with a lovely tension and no perceptible oak. Stuart loved the velvety tannins at the graceful finish. Yes, a natural wine with a graceful finish!

FINDING COMPLEXITY IN ALTO PIEMONTE

If there is a weak point in the Alto Piemonte wine region, it is in the vintages. Sitting within a zone where the continental climate meets the pre-Alpine one (i.e., rainy), it is difficult for harvests to follow one another with any sort of consistency. In fact, the opposite is true. Frequent precipitation, including hailstorms, threaten the vineyards every year.

But it is precisely from such marginal climates – such as in Burgundy – that long growing seasons and complex wines are found. And when the vintage is born under favorable conditions, the wines can be exceptional – not only among the top labels but also in entry-level offerings.

This is especially true for nebbiolo, the elegant grape variety that has an intrinsic complexity and nobility and is sometimes helped in blends by other varieties such as vespolina and uva rara, for example in Piedmont’s Boca or Ossola Valley, where nebbiolo is called prunent.

The appellations that take the main stage in Alto Piemonte are those capable of combining the finesse of a more northerly nebbiolo with power and concentration. The wines that shined in Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli’s tastings over the past week were from Bramaterra, whose strong volcanic impact is reflected in the smoky character of its wines, and from Gattinara.

The Travaglini Gattinara Riserva 2019, in particular, shows an ancient character, with notes reminiscent of rhubarb root, undergrowth and wood embers, with powerful but ripe tannins. And among the 2019 riservas from Gattinara winery Antoniolo, the San Francesco stood out for the elegance of its tannins in a complex and deeply profound profile.

The Antoniotti Bramaterra 2020, on the other hand, is from a more fruitful vintage and combines concentrated fruit with a vibrant, almost rocky and definitely smoky character that comes from the volcanic soils. Also noteworthy is the Borgofranco 2019 from Cantina Delsignore, which is already more open but no less powerful and long-lived.

– Jim Gordon, Stuart Pigott and Aldo Fiordelli 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.