Sauternes Perfection, Napa’s Classy Cabs and the Wines of the New North: Weekly Tasting Report (June 5-11)

It’s not very often to have three perfect wines from the same appellation, and it’s even rarer when they are sweet wines from Sauternes. But the 2021 vintage in Bordeaux produced a trio of astounding sweet wines from the legendary Chateau d’Yquem, Lafaurie-Peyraguey and Suduiraut. We only wish there were more of them.

Sauternes estates such as Lafaurie-Peyraguey and Suduiraut were hard hit by an early April frost that damaged the breaking buds on the vines, which reduced the crop to almost nothing. “We only made four hectoliters of Sauternes in 2021,” said Silvio Denz, the owner of Lafaurie-Peyraguey. “It was heartbreaking, but what we bottled was phenomenal quality.”

Christian Seely, the head of AXA, which owns Pichon Baron and Suduiraut, had a similar reduction in quantity yet stupendous results. “Sauternes lost 85 percent of the crop,” he said. “We made hardly any sweet wine, but it was one of the greatest ever. It is tragically beautiful. We were down to 10 percent of normal at one hectoliter per hectare, but the average is 15 hectoliters.”

READ MORE EN PRIMEUR 2023 (PART I): A RETURN TO BORDEAUX

Chateau d’Yquem managed to have a relatively normal crop level, according to estate manager Lorenzo Pasquini, due to their hard work in the vineyard maintaining the temperature above freezing. “We were touched by the frost in the beginning of April,” he said. “We lost 15 to 20 percent of the production but we made almost a normal production. We had frost mildew and hail but we had wonderful ripening for the grapes and the development of botrytis.”

The Lafaurie-Peyraguey is the richest of the three 2021 Sauternes, but they all share the same incredibly sweet, spicy, ginger, ginseng character of perfectly developed botrytis, which is a noble rot that grows on the skin of the grape and concentrates sugar in the center of the grapes by reducing the liquid inside. What struck James about these three 2021s is that they remain agile and balanced despite such high levels of residual sugar. It reminded him of the great 2001 vintage, or 1988 or 1990.

“I can’t think of a vintage with such richness, but it is still so light,” said Pierre Lurton, the head of Chateau d’Yquem.

James tasted the 2021 Lafaurie-Peyraguey against a 1921 Lafaurie-Peyraguey during his stay in Bordeaux in April. They were very different bottles but they were each magical in their own right. The 1921 was particularly sweet and powerful with a dark brown color. “It would be nice to know how the 2021 will evolve in comparison,” he said. “But sadly, I don’t think I will be around in 100 years to know.”

READ MORE BORDEAUX EN PRIMEUR 2023 (PART II): A VINTAGE TO LOVE, BUT AT WHAT PRICE?

Also from France, two top Champagnes we tasted come from Australian powerhouse Penfolds’ collaboration with Champagne Thienot. The Thiénot X Penfolds Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs 2014 is laser-focused and precise, with zero malolactic conversion, yet with a lovely creaminess and pie-crust character beautifully combined with fresh, vivid citrus fruit. It’s produced from chardonnay that was planted in the 1950s and 1960s in the Cote des Blancs village of Avize.

Associate editor Claire Nesbitt found the single-vineyard Thiénot X Penfolds Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs 2014 to have slightly more impressive length and complexity, displaying a salty and rich flavor profile of crushed nuts, red fruit and cocoa.

A selection of pinot noir from the Chambre aux Loups vineyard in Ay, it’s consistent with the previous two iterations – 2014 is the third release of both wines since the launch of the 2012s five years ago. Champagne comes only from Champagne, but these have a Penfolds twist – the (very) low dosage liqueur was aged in Yattarna chardonnay barrels.

NAPA'S CLASSY CABS

A host of classy cabernets from Constellation Brands’ portfolio and an excellent lineup of Burgundian-style Sonoma wines from a small producer top the California tasting notes this week.

Executive Editor Jim Gordon rated the whole lineup of highly allocated 2021 Schrader Napa Valley reds for this report, with one getting a perfect score, and also three outstanding reds from the Robert Mondavi Winery. Both labels are Constellation properties that share some vineyard sources, including the To Kalon Vineyard, which covers over 400 acres of prime Oakville benchland and is the site of the Robert Mondavi Winery.

The perfect-scoring Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Old Sparky 2021 is a showstopper. This elite wine in the Schrader lineup is a selection of the best barrels from three cabernet sauvignon clones planted in the 80-acre section of To Kalon Vineyard owned by Beckstoffer Vineyard. Tasted from a magnum, this unabashedly creamy, full-bodied wine made by Thomas Rivers Brown is powerful at 15.5 percent alcohol, quite packed with melted tannins and yet has inherent acidity for balance despite its obvious ripeness and size.

Not far behind in scoring is Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard RBS 2021. Practically oozing black fruits yet lightened by some fresh red cherry nuances, the massive wine is lavish, mouth-coating and long.

2021 is the last vintage that Schrader will include Beckstoffer To Kalon grapes, reflecting an inherent conflict between the two major owners of the original To Kalon property that have fought for legal rights to the name. This section of Oakville, west of Highway 29 and stretching to the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains, has long been paydirt for Napa cabernet sauvignon. The Harlan Estate sits above it on a knoll. Martha’s Vineyard sits adjacent to it on the southwest, separated by a line of eucalyptus trees.

Schrader’s other 2021s are also high in quality and big in structure. To mention just two: The Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard Colesworthy 2021 is creamy, opulent and very high scoring. Thomas Rivers Brown also used the Mondavi Heritage Clone vines and produced an absolutely stellar version, the Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville To Kalon Vineyard Heritage Clone 2021. See the notes below for Schrader’s other outstanding bottlings.

As for the Robert Mondavi wines from this property, the Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville To Kalon Vineyard The Reserve 2021 is one of the best performances we’ve ever reviewed. The Mondavi Reserve, as it’s commonly known, has a great track record for aging and improving with time, and holding its value. The 2021 is svelte but muscular, a bit richer and more layered than the 2018 and 2016, and the signature sage character is subdued here.

Perhaps more interesting for its novelty is the first release of a cabernet sauvignon made from a single clone that was planted in To Kalon in the mid-20^th century, then “discovered” and isolated decades later by the Mondavi family. This is now classified as a distinct selection, Mondavi Heritage Clone 31. Winemaker Kurtis Ogasawara says the grape bunches are tiny and loose, with small, thick-skinned berries that yield only about one ton per acre in a good year.

The wine has a long name: the Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville The Reserve To Kalon Vineyard Heritage Clone 2021. It gives sun-baked earth and dried herb aromas, brilliant red and blue fruits and a racy combination of tight-grained tannins but also vivid acidity. It will strongly benefit from more aging to open up, mellow out and gain complexity. This could easily age well for 25-plus years.

Also notable is a Bordeaux-style red blend from Robert Mondavi’s Mondavi’s estate vines that is a softer, fresher and more drinkable sibling of the To Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve. It is made with 49 percent cabernet sauvignon, 43 percent cabernet franc and small portions of petit verdot and malbec.

Saxon Brown wines showed a wonderful improvement from the last time our team rated them several years ago. Winemaker-owner Jeff Gaffner presented a lineup of outstanding 2021 chardonnays and pinot noirs from mostly Sonoma County grapes. His Saxon Brown Chardonnay Sonoma Coast Roberts Road Vineyard 2021 was our favorite: the most Burgundian, stony and Chablis-like, with good aging potential and lots of freshness.

Gaffner drew from Monterey County for his top-rated red, the Saxon Brown Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands Garys’ Vineyard 2021, which is vivid, lively and deep, contrasting with Gaffner’s more savory and individualistic single-vineyard offerings from sites like Durell, Gap’s Crown and Jasper Freestone.

PUSHING THE NORTHERN LIMIT FOR WINE

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott has been fascinated by the way the warming climate has been pushing the northern limit of wine growing ever further toward the North Pole for many years. Traditionally 50 degrees north was considered the absolute limit, but this has already shifted to around 60 degrees north – the latitude of Norway’s capital, Oslo.

Stuart first traveled to Denmark to visit vineyards and taste wines back in 2007, so the invitation to a tasting of New Nordic Wines in Hamburg was impossible to resist. Since 2007, the vineyard area of Denmark has increased from about 60 hectares to almost 200 hectares today, which is the same kind of growth countries like Poland and neighboring Sweden have experienced, but there are also a small number of wineries that have popped up in Norway and Finland.

A good part of what Stuart tasted in Hamburg reminded him of the predominantly light-bodied, crisp dry whites he experienced back in 2007, but several producers have made huge progress and now make wines that are revolutionary in style and quality. The most striking of these are the red wines from the pinot noir precoce grape variety. It is an early-ripening, mutation of pinot noir from Germany, where it is called fruhburgunder, or “early Burgundy.”

The Njord winery on the Danish Island of Seeland is run by Sune Albertson and Janni Nielsen, who have 4.6 hectares of vineyards, with the oldest vines dating from 2010. Stuart tasted one of their first wines, a 2013 red, eight years ago and found it light and harmonious, but with some subtlety. The transformation since then has been extraordinary! Today, instead of just one blend, Njord produces a handful of single-vineyard wines that are radically contrasting.

The Njord Pinot Noir Précoce En Variation 2021 is at once fragrant and dark, with notes of violets, forest berries, earth and bark. It’s an extremely complex and subtle pinot with grand cru-type concentration and finesse. Sadly, this one is going to be very difficult to track down as it comes from a 0.25 hectare plot, but all the wines from this daring producer manage to square the circle of lightness and delicacy with depth and structure. This achievement is a game-changer for what Stuart calls the New North wines.

The most extraordinary whites were the dessert wines from Ornberg, also on Seeland, none more so than the Ornberg Seeland CV 2020, which is still embryonic in the way that great German TBAs often are at this age. The nose is a fabulous coulis of exotic fruit with a touch of mushrooms from intense botrytis. It is both dense and luscious, but very bright and precise, the honeyed sweetness lifted by crystalline acidity.

Ornberg's CV is a blend of several grape varieties including solaris, which is planted in almost half of Denmark’s vineyards. This is a German vine crossing created in 1975. There’s very little of it in Germany because it is too early ripening for the new climate situation., but it has great potential in the New North. Ornberg also showed the best dry white from this grape, the Ornberg Solaris Seeland Paulus 2022, which had a nose of mangosteens, peaches and fresh pineapple with a touch of Thai basil. It’s got 14 percent natural alcohol, but the concentration and leesy complexity easily integrated that. The silky and stony finish really made it stand out.

Stuart also tasted some remarkable rieslings from Chateau Pauque in Luxembourg, the best being the Château Pauqué Riesling Luxembourg Sous la Roche-Rue 2022. It has a deep chalk and summer flowers character, but the elegance and refinement are even more impressive. There’s a wonderful interplay of restrained creaminess and minerality at the long, brilliant finish. It comes from the Luxembourg section of the Mosel Valley where all the soils are limestone, giving the wines a totally different personality compared with the wines of the German Mosel, where the soil is predominantly gray slate.

Meanwhile, a Bordeaux blend from Trentino stood out in our tastings of Italian wines over the past week. Coming from the slopes of the Dolomites in northern Italy that take their name from dolomia, the limestone soil that prevails there, the San Leonardo Vigneti delle Dolomiti 2019 is made by Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga and his father, Carlo.

It’s a blend of cabernet sauvignon, carmenere and merlot that was fermented in concrete and aged in barrel for 24 months. Although one normally expects fruit, power, concentration and tannic structure in a Bordeaux blend, this is a wine with a leafy style that is never austere, with elegant tannins and well-integrated acidity that in the 2019 vintage finds a marked harmony.

The cool climate of northern Italy and limestone soil bring out the best in this wine, giving it longevity and finesse, while the hand and style of the Guerrieri Gonzaga family help make it one of the best Bordeaux blends to come out of Italy.

– James Suckling, Claire Nesbitt, 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.

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