Signs of Brilliance from Napa 2021, Plus a Mind-Blowing Beaujolais Surprise: Weekly Tasting Report (Feb 15-21)

It’s been an interesting three weeks in California tasting a few hundred wines from Napa Valley and Sonoma County. The vintages have been mostly 2020 and 2021, and they are two very different years. The former is a year that many wineries didn’t bottle wine because of two terrible wildfires at the end of the growing season, yet a few excellent wines were produced. The latter, meanwhile, appears to be a classic vintage in the making across the board in both red and white.

“We just got lucky with the fire here,” said Nick Gislason, the winemaker at Screaming Eagle who made a spectacular red in 2020, with the rating below. Both the Screaming Eagle and the Flight 2020s are aromatically gorgeous, as well as vivid and energetic on the palate. Gislason explained that they started picking about the same time that the first wildfire started in mid-August and finished picking before the larger blaze in late September began.

"We didn’t have a problem down here,” he said. “The air was pretty darn good [even during the first fire, called the LNU]. Up on the mountaintops, you saw the smoke and it was thick … but these [grapes for the wines] were picked exactly when we wanted to pick. It’s a vintage we gravitate to and it’s what we like to drink.”

READ MORE TOP 100 VALUE WINES OF 2022

I heard similar comments from Tod Mostero, the winemaker at Dominus and Ulysses, which both produced excellent reds in 2020 – all are rated in this report. He said that the big problems in 2020 were the high average temperatures during the growing season and the ever-increasing heat spikes in August and October. “Damage in 2020 was to grapes exposed to the sun,” he said. “We harvested two or three times and dropped fruit. We did extreme sorting at the cellar. Optical sorters were indispensable.”

From what I can gather from tasting, Sonoma and Carneros were less impacted in 2020, and you can find many more well-made pinots and chardonnays as highlighted by a number of wines from Etude and Maritana in this report. Please note that Continuum, a long favorite of ours each year from Napa, elected to make just a second wine in 2020, Novicium, which was much more open and drinkable than other young vintages from this winery. “We are pretty happy with the quality in the end of this wine, even though we couldn’t release our Continuum,” said winemaker and owner Tim Mondavi.

The 2021 vintage is already hard to compare to 2020. I think it’s going to be a classic vintage, showing fantastic structure in both reds and whites. For example, don’t miss the Beringer Chardonnay Napa Valley Private Reserve 2021. It’s a great white with phenolic structure, intense fruit and wonderful freshness, and it sells for less than $50 bottle. This is a great white year.

READ MORE PREMIERE NAPA VALLEY: 2021 TAKES CENTER STAGE

SASSICAIA 2020: FRESH AND OPPULENT

BIBI GRAETZ ON HIS SINGLE-VINEYARD WINES

Reds are going to be similarly high quality in 2021. You can see the quality in the 2021 pinot noirs that year coming out on the market. They have a combination of aromatic brilliance with tight and pure fruit. Meanwhile, the few dozen barrels sample of mostly cabernet sauvignons from 2021 James tried this week are really noteworthy. Check out the small tasting report on 2021 reds for this Saturday’s Premiere Napa Valley wine auction in St. Helena.

I also tasted new releases from a couple of star winemakers from Tuscany: Tenuta San Guido (Sassicaia) and Bibi Graetz. The 2020 Sassicaia is a fresh yet opulent wine even though it was produced in such a challengingly hot and dry grape-growing season, while Bibi Graetz released three new and fresh single-vineyard reds from Tuscan grapes including sangiovese, colorino and canaiolo. “These are really fun and great wines,” Graetz said over a Zoom call last Saturday.

A MIND-BLOWING BEAUJOLAIS

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott is finally approaching the end of his annual marathon of Beaujolais tastings at his home close to Frankfurt and didn’t expect any real surprises until he tried the Nicolas Boudeau Brouilly Garanches 2021, which, he says, "blew my mind" with its amazing ripeness and concentration for such a challenging vintage.

While Stuart had never heard of Nicolas Bourdeau before, Chateau de la Chaize is a very ambitious project that’s been on our radar for some years. “With 150 hectares of vineyards, including land in more than a dozen top sites of Brouilly and Cote de Brouilly plus more than a handful of the best locations in Fleurie, Chateau de al Chaize is a major player in Beaujolais,” Stuart explained, “and this was the best group of wines they have sent us so far."

"Chateau de Pierreux and Domaine de Clos du Fife (Sylvain Tete) are other examples of producers we have followed for some time whose 2021s exceeded our expectations."

Systematically tasting through wine regions is a crucial part of what we do, but we are always on the lookout for unique opportunities to make important discoveries. "When I arrived at the Hut & Vino [Hat and Wine] store right where the Berlin Wall used to stand, I wondered if I was in the right place for the tasting of Serbian wines importer Lukas Ertl had organized for me," Stuart said. “But yes, the tasting was there. How very Berlin!"

Of course, eccentric ambience is no guarantee of wine quality, but Stuart was able to taste the wines from a group of mostly small producers, many of which he had never heard of before. Ertl’s Samovino import company specializes in them.

"Sagmeister in the Fruska Gora region of Serbia was the most startling of these small, avant garde producers, and the Sagmeister Ferment Fruska Gora Kew 2017 was the finest of their dry whites and the most exciting discovery I've made in years,” Stuart said. “It’s as good as any dry furmint from the grape’s native Hungary. This is an enormously mineral wine with stunning balance."

Stuart also found some impressive reds, some of which are really friendly in price. Scan the tasting notes below to find some bargains and discoveries.

In Tuscany, Tastings Editor Jo Cooke began his annual review of the wines of Veneto, Italy’s most prolific winemaking region. The stars of the show over the past week were two late-release Amarones – the Bertani Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2013 and Zymē Amarone della Valpolicella Classico La Mattonara Riserva 2009.

The first comes from one of Veneto’s historic producers, Bertani, which was founded in 1857 and continues to set benchmarks for quality throughout its range of wines. The 2013 Amarone is aged for seven years in 60-hl Slavonian oak casks prior to further aging in bottle before release. It's an excellent of example of the “Bertani style” – meaning plenty of complexity, well-integrated tannins and great length with nothing over-pushed and nothing out of place. It’s a wine you can enjoy now or allow to age in your cellar for decades.

The second wine is from an estate that you may not know, Zymē (Greek for “yeast”), and if that’s the case, it’s time for you to get acquainted. The Amarone 2009 Riserva is stunning for its youthful, fresh feel. It’s amazing for a 14-year-old wine, although not unique in the Amarone category, which is renowned for its aging potential. Owner and winemaker Celestino Gaspari is the son-in-law of the late and legendary Valpolicella winemaker Giuseppe Quintarelli, in whose winery Celestino worked for many years before founding the Zymē estate in 1999.

Jo tasted through almost the entire range of Zymē wines and they all show outstanding quality, in particular the Zymē Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2017, a black-fruit beauty with a modern, polished touch, and the eccentric Zymē Veneto Harlequin 2015, which is a blend of 15 indigenous and international varieties, 11 reds and four whites, ranging from corvina to cabernet sauvignon and from garganega to sauvignon blanc. Check the tasting note below to see how it all fits together extremely well. It’s a testament to the winemaker’s skill.

CHILE'S 'FAST AND FURIOUS' 2020

Meanwhile, Senior Editor Zekun Shuai finished up his Chile tasting trip by tapping into offerings from some of the country’s top producers, including Clos Apalta and Lapostolle, as well as those from Chile’s Independent Winemakers Movement (MOVI), such as Garage Wine Co. and Polkura. A few carignans from the collaborative project Vignadores de Carignan, or VIGNO, which promotes old-vine Carignan wines from Maule, are also at the top of our scoresheet below.

Andrea Leon, the chief winemaker for Clos Apalta and Lapostolle, told us that because 2020 was a hot and dry vintage, “reading” the vintage early in the season and doing the vineyard management to maintain freshness while avoiding excessive sunlight and heatwaves were of utmost importance. “It was also fast and furious,” she said. “We harvested quite early, around 10 days before the normal years – not crazy early, but it was a very condensed harvest and we also picked the carmenere significantly earlier, so the blend just worked well with reasonable extraction and selection.”

The result is a few 2020 wines that show finesse and vibrancy. The Clos Apalta Valle de Apalta 2020 is a refined, expressive and layered expression with a fine saline, savory twist and silky tannins.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF CHILE 2022

Another great 99-point wine Leon made was a pure syrah from the Clos du Lican vineyard, which is set amid a forest and has granitic soils with plenty of clay and a southeastern exposure. The 10-hectares of syrah were planted in 2004 and 2005, and 2019 was the debut vintage. But much fine-tuning came with the 2020 vintage, which Zekun believes is more dialed back from the rich and more concentrated 2019, showing more elegance and purity with fine, elastic tannins and an ultra-long and almost ethereal finish.

In the south, Zekun spent two days with the MOVI producers and tasted several carignans and VIGNO wines. One of the top wines was the Garage Wine Co. Cariñena Valle de Maule Empedrado Cru Truquilemu Field Blend 2019, a soulful carignan from a small part of Derek Mossman’s old, 2.5-hectare Truquilemu vineyard. The blue fruit and flower with fresh herbs and wild berries give the wine juicy concentration and freshness without unwanted weight.

With a low pH of just 3.39 and 12.8 percent alcohol, it is one of the best and most drinkable carignans we know from Chile today – so much so that you might not be able to resist finishing a whole bottle instead of giving it the chance to age for the 10 or more years it could take until it fully blossoms.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman; Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor; Jo Cooke, Tastings Editor; Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor

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.