Napa’s Rutherford Edge, Sparkling New York and Into Eastern Europe: Weekly Tasting Report (July 24-30)

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team rated 877 wines from nine countries over the past week, with Executive Editor Jim Gordon in California getting the first look of any journalist at the expanded lineup of Bella Union wines in the Rutherford appellation of Napa Valley. Tasting in the former Provenance winery that’s now nearing the end of its major renovation, he found exciting Bordeaux-varietal reds from 2022 (and 2021) as well as refreshing, unorthodox whites from 2023.

The top-scoring red is a dressed-up version of the estate-grown cabernet sauvignon that Bella Union has made for several years. The Bella Union Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Rutherford 2021 wears a new gold, engraved medallion to identify it as the winery’s most ambitious and expensive item. This plush, luxurious and chocolaty wine is a collaboration with consultant Thomas Rivers Brown.

Next, the Bella Union Winery Napa Valley La Gemma 2022 offers great polish, concentration and a quiet power that will help it age well. Not far behind in focus and appeal are the Bella Union Winery Napa Valley Cultivist 2022, a floral, exuberant Bordeaux-style red blend that leads with merlot, and Bella Union Winery Napa Valley Liaison 2022, a striking, tobacco-scented blend of equal parts malbec and cabernet sauvignon.

What distinguishes these wines from others in the Far Niente Wine Estates portfolio is largely the Rutherford location. This AVA, just north of Far Niente’s location in Oakville, could be called the original home of cabernet sauvignon in Napa Valley, since Inglenook and Beaulieu had such success with the variety in the early 20^th century.

Besides for the flagship La Gemma, the Bella Union wines don’t say “Rutherford” on the label, although a good part of the grapes for these reds is grown on the extremely valuable 120 acres of land at Bella Union.

Bella Union winemaker Brooke Price and and vice-president of winemaking Andrew Delos talked about dealing with the infamous heat dome of early September 2022. They said they waited until after the extreme weather to harvest most of their reds. “It was important to wait it out, lean on your viticulture team, use sprinklers and shade cloth to cool the vines,” Delos said. “Sugar came back down after the heat dome while flavor kept moving.”

Bella Union's Pinot Blanc Napa Valley 2023 gives a sneak peek at how balanced and fresh this vintage is. It’s a treat to taste this rather unusual, silky and lush white that was grown in Carneros. Maybe more unusual for Napa is the balanced, floral and nutty Bella Union Winery Napa Valley White Blend Melange 2023. It’s a Rhone-style wine made from 57 percent marsanne and 43 percent roussanne.

SPARKLING IN NEW YORK

Jim and Associate Editor Ryan Montgomery also tapped into the latest offerings from the North Fork of Long Island, New York, with the tastings reinforcing the region's potential for producing high-quality sparkling and white wines.

One of the standout North Fork producers in their tastings was Sparkling Pointe, whose focus on traditional Champagne production methods shined across their whole range of delicate, refined and classy wines. The Sparkling Pointe North Fork of Long Island Séduction Brut 2014 is particularly noteworthy. It’s made from a blend of 49 percent pinot noir, 6 percent pinot meunier and 45 percent chardonnay, which then spent eight years on lees in bottle before disgorgement. The result is a fresh and expressive nose with a textured mouthfeel and underlying minerality and tension.

The Lieb Cellars Pinot Blanc Long Island Estate Sparkling also impressed. This non-vintage bubbly, comprised of 55 percent chardonnay and 45 percent pinot blanc, was aged for 60 months on the yeast lees. The wine is nuanced and complex, offering beautiful toasty, flinty, brioche-like aromas with concentrated fruit flavors on a very fine-beaded texture.

Both Lieb Cellars and Sparkling Pointe aptly demonstrate the North Fork's capacity for producing fine sparkling wines that rival those from more widely known regions. Beyond sparkling wines, Lieb and Wolfer Estate showcase the potential of sauvignon blanc from the North Fork. Wolffer Estate, headed by renowned New York winemaker Roman Roth, produced a very impressive and refined Sauvignon Blanc Long Island Antonov 2022, which displays mineral-rich and aromatic flavors with a generous palate weight matched by high-energy acidity.

Lieb Cellars' Sauvignon Blanc 2023 also stood out for its balanced, elegant and vibrant profile, with flavors of gooseberry, key lime pie, and passionfruit. These wines illustrate the versatility and quality of the North Fork's terroir for high energy, balanced white wines.

Beyond traditionally styled wines, a relatively new producer on the New York scene, RGNY, is producing more “natural” or orange-style wines that maintain varietal integrity and deserve to be considered at the higher end of quality wines produced on the East Coast.

Their orange RGNY Wines Gewürztraminer 2021, fermented on skins in amphora, presents a complex and unorthodox flavor profile of tangerine, grapefruit, and honeydew melon with a dry, slightly astringent texture. Similarly, their Sauvignon Blanc 2022 is assertively mineral and aromatic, highlighting a truly white Bordeaux-style blend.

There were also a few North Fork reds that caught the eye of Ryan and Jim, particularly those from Paumanok, a winery that displayed a fine touch in both the vineyard and cellar in carrying their Bordeaux varieties in a forward direction. Their flagship wine, the Paumanok Assemblage 2021, a blend of 43 percent cabernet sauvignon, 28 percent merlot, 19 percent petit verdot and 10 percent cabernet franc, is a concentrated, layered, complex and quality-driven wine that is eminently ageworthy.

INTO EASTERN EUROPE

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted an exciting selection of new wines from Eastern Europe that really showed how much progress is being made at different locations there with a wide variety of grapes.

Anyone who thinks that Romanian wine is at best simple and rustic should try the very compact and full-bodied Crama DeMatei Dealu Mare Matei 2019 which has stacks of dusty, hot dry earth character, deep blackberry fruit and stacks of plush tannins. This blend of merlot and cabernet sauvignon with the native feteasca neagra grape comes from what is arguably Romania’s most exciting region to the north of Bucharest on the eastern side of the Carpathian Mountains. It still needs some time reach its best harmony.

In contrast, the Hungarian St. Andrea Egri Bikavér Grand Superior Nagy-Eged-Hegy Agapé 2019 has already reached the sweet spot in its development. The enveloping nose of ripest red berries, summer flowers and seashells must be experienced to be believed! It is equally eye-popping on the full-bodied palate, where there’s an almost overwhelming combination of richness, super-fine tannins and fresh acidity. This cuvee of the Hungarian kekfrankos and kadarta grapes with merlot, pinot noir and syrah is emphatically dry. Yes, the name looks complicated, but the front label says Agape in big letters!

If you want a younger wine with more fresh fruit aromas, the St. Andrea Egri Bikaver Grand Superior Hangács 2022 is brimming with wild berry, sandalwood and licorice character. It, too, is compact and concentrated, but already quite enticing. All of these reds benefit from decanting and plenty of aeration in the glass. Like the Agape, this is a complex cuvee, in this case including cabernet franc as well as the Hungarian kekfrankos and kadarka grapes.

The Vida Péter Kadarka Szekszárd Bonsai 2023 shows just how diverse the wines of Hungary are. Although it, too, has off-the-scale concentration, it is also super-fresh and super-silky, the incredible mineral acidity and an exciting touch of bitterness making it dangerously refreshing. And the aroma of violets is extraordinary! This unique expression of  kadarta comes from more than 100-year-old vines that look like the bonsai tree, hence the name.

WRAPPING UP FRANCIACORTA

Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli continued his tastings of the wines of the Franciacorta region of Italy, where he was able to explore not only the region – an extraordinary morainic amphitheater that surrounds the southern side of Lake Iseo – but also all the different vintages that have recently been released by producers.

One vintage that stands out for its freshness is 2013, which produced tight, ageworthy wines across much of the peninsula. Examples like the Berlucchi Franciacorta Palazzo Lana Extrême Extra Brut Riserva 2013 are emblematic. Here, alongside Franciacorta’s telltale stone fruit, were pastry notes and cotton candy with a lemony, citrus character. The complexity and tension of the wines make for great drinking now, but the potential for longevity is also there for those who wish to age the wine.

The Chiara Ziliani winery is making a name for itself not only for the generosity of its offerings – numbers matter – but also for its stylistic quality, especially in regard to its Saten wines. Saten is a unique style of Franciacorta whose production involves the exclusive use of white grapes like chardonnay and pinot bianco, a second fermentation within the bottle with less sugar resulting in fewer, more delicate bubbles, and aging for at least 24 months.

In Chiara Ziliani’s interpretation, the Conte di Provaglio stands out for its notes of lemon curd, lime and chalky minerality with a taut palate. The Chiara Ziliani Millesimato 2020, meanwhile, has a lovely gunpowder and toasted character but retains Franciacorta’s typical stone fruit at the core, while the Chiara Ziliani Franciacorta Ziliani C Satèn Brut is more evolved, with notes of zabaglione well supported by the typical acidity of a Franciacorta chardonnay.

– Jim Gordon, Stuart Pigott, Ryan Montgomery 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.

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