Rose & Arrow’s Perfect Pinot, Deeply Malbec from Argentina and Focused 2024 Ports

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team rated 531 wines over the past week from five countries, but it was a new releases from Rose & Arrow in Oregon’s Willamette Valley that landed at the top of our ratings, earning a well-deserved perfect score. Staff Writer and Taster Courtney Humiston came away from her visit to Rose & Arrow impressed by the complexity and profound texture of all of winemaker Felipe Ramirez’s offerings.

Founded in 2012 as a collaboration between the legendary soil scientist Pedro Parra, Burgundian winemaker Louis-Michel Liger-Belair and the late Mark Tarlov, a filmmaker who also founded Evening Lands Vineyards in the Willamette Valley, Rose & Arrow’s goal is to craft wines that best interpret the underlying volcanic terroir. And to find their plots, Ramirez said during a tour of their Riverline vineyard in the Chehalam Mountains, “We look for rocks.”

Their pinot noirs are really fantastic. The white labels highlight single vineyards and “polygons” – individual blocks of vineyards determined by soil types. These wines are distinct, nuanced and compelling, but it was the power and structure of the Rose & Arrow Estate Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Touchstone 2023, a wine that Ramirez ages for an additional year, that helped it earn a perfect score. Deeply mineral, it’s rounded out by fresh yet ripe dark fruit, fine tannins and spice. It is built to age forever but is compelling and delicious right now.

We also reviewed the second vintage of Atomique3, a chardonnay-only collaboration between Ramirez and another Burgundy great – Jean-Marc Roulet. As with his Rose & Arrow line, Felipe makes the Atomique3 wines based on soil type in the vineyard. Le Basalt 2022 (98 points) is intense, structured with flinty minerality and notes of citrus peel, while Le Sédimentaire 2022 (97) is softer and more generous with a range of stone fruit and citrus. Both have wonderful acidity, layers of texture and are a absolute delight to experience, Courtney said.

Deeply Malbec

There are a thousand different malbecs in Argentina from an equally large number of massal selections, winemakers and vineyards – that’s how Senior Editor Zekun Shuai felt tasting through some of the country’s top malbecs this year in our Hong Kong office. These included quite a few deliciously austere expressions from the Uco Valley that left Zekun in awe, but he also sampled some deep, opulent expressions from great, old-vine sites in Luján de Cuyo as well as those pushing the extremes of terroir and altitude in Salta and Mendoza.

Winemakers Roberto Cipresso and Santiago Achaval are among the frontrunners in terms of pushing these extremes and limits by producing ripe, concentrated but very complex wines. The Matervini Malbec Las Heras El Challao Piedras Viejas Laderas 2024 (98) is one of the best from Zekun’s tastings over the past week. This is a wine that goes full throttle in its richness, complexity and concentration. It’s very ripe and beguilingly heady, and one can miss the beautiful depth here if the focus is on the wine’s singular concentration alone.

The wine comes from pre-cordillera slopes in the northwest of Mendoza situated at around 1,500 meters, where the soils are quite poor and thin but rich in limestones with some granite. The grape crop in the vineyard, according to Achaval, amounted to only one bunch per shoot, and the yield was an extremely low 500 kilograms per acre. Yet the balance in the wine is terrific despite the concentration, with 13.7 percent alcohol and lots of brooding complexity and fine tannins – a solid manifestation of malbec’s terroir and stylistic diversity springing from nature and human ingenuity in the vineyard.

Also look for the Matervini Malbec Valles Calchaquíes Imposibles 2024 (97). This Pucará expression punches to its limit, with huge concentration, depth and color but without overextraction. It’s a colossal wine but still balanced and not chunky or overdone, according to Zekun, who recommends “the best juicy steak” you can find to go with it.

Focused 2024 Ports

Senior Editor Jacobo García Andrade tasted some terrific 2024 Port wines after several producers became the first to declare for the year, with Niepoort Wines among the leaders. This followed a few years of irregular declarations from producers, owing to the challenging climatic conditions.

The winter was notably wet, replenishing water reserves after a period of deficit. Late winter and spring unfolded under relatively cool conditions, with regular rainfall. The summer, while dry, was not excessively warm, allowing for a measured and precise harvest, with a strong sense of equilibrium.

Overall, the 2024 growing season was moderate, resulting in balanced wines of a kind not seen in recent years. Most of the Port offerings fall below the level of 100 grams per liter of residual sugar, which is a relatively low level for the category, suggesting that picking decisions and timing of fortification played a key role in shaping their profile.

The wines from Quinta do Noval and Symington Family Estates, which Jacobo and James tasted in Bordeaux during their recent visit there, are particularly compelling. They move away from the more pruny, richer expressions of warmer vintages, instead showing cooler blue fruit, greater purity and definition. The tannins are structured yet enveloping, they were stimulating to taste but have the capacity to age.

Among the standouts is the Quinta do Noval Nacional 2024 (98-99 points), which shows its characteristic concentration combined with a more focused tannic profile that lends the wine precision and detail. From Symington, the Quinta do Vesuvio 2024 (98) appeals with absorbing aromatics and a fine balance between purity of fruit and tannic structure. Its mosaic of vineyard sites and varying altitudes contributes to the singularity of this wine.

Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli also tasted some older-vintage Italian wines he scored highly, including the 2006 (98 points) and 2009 (97) iterations of Argentiera’s Bolgheri Superiore as well as Arpepe’s complex and layered Valtellina Superiore Grumello Buon Consiglio Riserva 2001 (98) and austere and mineral 2009 (97).

– Courtney Humiston, Zekun Shuai and Jacobo García Andrade contributed reporting.

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by the JamesSuckling.com tasting team. 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.