Purity and Precision from Sonoma, China’s Opulent Marselans and a Virtuous Amarone

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team rated 363 wines over the past week from nine countries, with Courtney Humiston leading the way in Sonoma, California, where the seasonal harvest was underway. Courtney met with winemakers on crush pads – the pre-processing staging area for freshly picked grapes – and vineyards to share their newest releases, largely from the 2023 vintage.

There was light rain in the forecast for Sonoma County, and winemakers had been up all night sampling and scheduling picks when Courtney visited. Michael Browne, a co-founder of Kosta Browne, arrived early at his new venture, CIRQ, feeling confident, and for good reason. His CIRQ Pinot Noir Russian River Valley 2023 is representative of why we think this is a vintage of great quality, balance and diversity. The wine is structured, full-bodied and bright with pretty aromatics of chalk and cherry and layers of concentration and refined structure. Winemaker Cabell Coursey attributed this balance to a long, cool hangtime that year, which resulted in wines of remarkable freshness, energy and precision. Brown also makes the Chev lines of wines, including the classic, medium-bodied Chev Pinot Noir Sonoma County Russian River Valley 2023.

From the Russian River, we headed to a historic farmhouse in Sonoma, where viticulturist Anne Moller-Racke first planted seven acres of pinot noir in 2001 – the same year she founded Donum Estate. Since 2019, after spending 18 years at Donum, she has been fully committed to Blue Farm, the winery she runs with her daughter, Hannah Gropman.

The 11 Blue Farm wines from 2023 that we tasted were all exceptionally pure and scored highly. The Pinot Noir Sonoma County Fort Ross-Seaview King Ridge Vineyard stood out for its ability to capture the terroir of the far Sonoma Coast with nuanced aromas of wild herbs, sea salt, forest floor, bay laurel and lupine, with flavors of crunchy red fruits and stony minerality.

On the chardonnay front, we tasted an exciting inaugural release from the legendary Platt Vineyard with general manager Frank Dotzler and winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown. The Platt Vineyard Chardonnay West Sonoma Coast Estate Reserve 2023 is a mouthwatering, full-bodied wine with layers of richness, notes of citrus and white flowers and distinct salinity in the finish.

“The wines are always crystalline, mineral and citrus driven,” said Rivers Brown, who has made wine from Platt for years under his Rivers Marie label (along with the likes of David Ramey and Ted Lemon of Littorai). “Because there is a lot of wind, the grapes always have thick skins and nice concentration.”

Another memorable coastal chardonnay came from Hartford Court, where we tasted 17 single-vineyard wines at the family's winery in Forestville during a busy day of receiving fruit.

The Hartford Court Chardonnay West Sonoma Coast Seascape Vineyard 2023 comes from a vineyard just one ridge over from the Pacific Ocean. Hailey Hartford Murray, the second-generation owner and president, noted that the long, cool season benefitted these marginal sites, giving them opportunity to develop complexity later in the growing season.

The wine is truly evocative of the coast, with aromas of sea breeze and limes. It has a wonderful weight and concentration and is balanced by long, textural acidity with a salty and succulent finish.

Opulence from China

Senior editor Zekun Shuai was in the autonomous region of Ningxia, in north central China, over the past week, where he visited a dozen producers and tasted around 100 wines, with the top-rated bottle coming from the Fei Tswei ("Copower Jade") winery, which is based about 40 kilometers from Ningxia’s capital, Yinchuan.

Zekun tasted Fei Tswei’s latest bottlings with Lily Zhang, the owner, and winemaker Zhou Yeli, with the marselan Copower Jade Ningxia He 长和翡翠“和”干红葡萄酒 2021 showing restrained opulence, concentration and polish without sassy flowery aromas typical of the variety. The wine captivates for its finesse and filigreed tannins, though now power, which is why a touch of petit verdot was added to lend a bit more structure to the wine, according to Zhou.

Another outstanding bottle from Ningxia was the more structured Helan Qingxue Vineyard Ningxia Jiabeilan Reserve 贺兰晴雪酒庄加贝兰珍藏版 2022, a Bordeaux-style cabernet sauvignon, made by Zhang Jing the owner and winemaker at Helan Qingque.

Zhang, who likes to pick early for both reds and whites, also made the fresh Helan Qingxue Vineyard Chardonnay Ningxia Jiabeilan Reserve 贺兰晴雪加贝兰珍藏版霞多丽 2024, which shows the “naked” character – in other words, no acidity – she prefers in her whites.

The Jiabeilan benefitted from 2024’s cool conditions, showing nectarines, orchard fruit and subtle creaminess alongside a crisp, tense texture. “After recent years of wines with high alcohol, many over 15 percent, 2024 and 2025 will be remembered as a drastic change of style for Ningxia despite much smaller production levels,” Zhang said.

Ningxia saw continuous rain in the late summer of 2024, from Aug. 31 up until harvest. Although the white grapes, which were picked early, were not impacted, the reds suffered from unprecedented rot, resulting in lighter-colored wines with higher acidity levels and lower alcohol. Some producers reported that they lost their entire crop.

And from what Zekun tasted of the 2025 vintage wines from tank, such as from the Ren Yi Yuan winery, the year is looking like a lighter one, with good acidity, moderate alcohol and color, but most reds will be much better off compared with the difficult 2024.

A Virtuous Amarone

Amarone is always Amarone – especially when the great red of Valpolicella is shaped by the region’s classic producers, like Zenato, or entrusted to the hands of a house better known for its whites, such as Pieropan, as Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli found in his tastings over the past week.

The most important wine from the hills around Verona, which are notable for their complex patchwork of volcanic, calcareous and iron-rich soils, has often been criticized for its power. Yet that criticism, on closer inspection, says more about impatience than excess concentration: the best estates are releasing their wines later and later, confident in the virtues of age.

The message is simple: give Amarone della Valpolicella the time it asks for, and it will return the favor in emotion. The “Classico” zone, higher in altitude and cooler than the more generous eastern valleys, brings further nuance, depth and freshness to the wine’s natural opulence.

Zenato’s Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2020 stays true to the fruit-forward soul of corvina, offering bright raspberry, black pepper, milk and mint, bay leaf and cocoa powder. Still youthful, it’s full and dense yet balanced, with taut, ripe tannins and a cleansing acidity.

Pieropan’s Amarone della Valpolicella Riserva 2019 is darker and more introspective, with blackberries and prunes, bitter chocolate and vanilla, pepper, licorice and graphite. Broad and powerful, its tannins glide with a velvety texture, carried by long acidity and a lingering, toasty finish.

– Courtney Huniston, Zekun Shuai and Aldo Fiordelli contributed reporting.

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by the 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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