Sonoma’s Pinot and Chardonnay Masters, Plus Pushing the Limits in Germany: Weekly Tasting Report

The California wines that Executive Editor Jim Gordon tasted this past week include many bright shining stars in pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon and syrah, the latter of which rarely gets its due in the state. To start with, he tasted the whole current 2022 lineup of Sonoma County’s Williams Selyem winery with the director of winemaking, Jeff Mangahas, who carries on the tradition of gentle handling and aging in Francois Freres barrels started by the founders Burt Williams and Ed Selyem 45 years ago.

The winery is now under the majority ownership of 200-year-old Burgundy firm Domain Faiveley, showing how much respect the Williams Selyem wines have gained over the decades, even in the spiritual home of chardonnay and pinot noir.

Williams Selyem was not the first outfit in California to succeed with pinot noir and chardonnay, but among the first to really master it, taking advantage of cool-climate fruit and traditional winemaking techniques.

With an ultra-contemporary winery in the Russian River Valley, Mangahas now has access to all the technical tools a winemaker could want but chooses to stick with the basics that Williams and Selyem used back in the day.

Pinot noir ferments in converted stainless steel dairy tanks that have been cut in half longways, giving a round bottom and open top. These were affordable as cast-off equipment in the 1980s and continue to lend a silky polish to the wines today.

Foot treading of the grapes is another throwback technique. Mangahas also uses a proprietary yeast strain isolated here decades ago and the Francois Freres French barrels, known for elegantly shaping wines without overcoming them with spice notes – no more than 30 percent new ones for each wine.

To those practices, add low sulfite additions, no filtering, no fining, gentle movement from tank to barrel and extra care to prevent oxidation. “Our signature style is the sum of all these unique things that Williams Selyem does,” Managhas said.

Not to mention the huge advantage of sourcing grapes grown in several of the most celebrated sites in the Russian River Valley and beyond. Great examples are the classic, mineral-driven Williams Selyem Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Rochioli Riverblock Vineyard 2022, and the Chardonnay Russian River Allen Vineyard 2022, which is incredibly appealing and delicious.

Another Sonoma County winemaker with a keen eye for terroir is Jeff Cohn, owner-winemaker of Jeff Cohn Cellars. He is one of the tenacious vintners who stuck with syrah, viognier and zinfandel after all of them had their faddish moments of fame in the 1990s and then seemed to recede to backstage status.

Six of Cohn’s wines are rated 95 points or higher, with his top achievement a potent, savory, meaty wine that has few peers in California: the Jeff Cohn Syrah Sonoma County Rockpile So Serine 2021. Fermented with 30 percent whole clusters and aged in all-new French barrels, it lays bare the power of the high-elevation Rockpile district without turning heavy.

Cohn honed his winemaking skills working under Kent Rosenblum of zinfandel specialist Rosenblum cellars, and he continues to make some of the state’s best zins, including a distinctive, peppery, blackberry-laden wine from Sierra Foothills grapes and fermented in a clay amphora – the Jeff Cohn Zinfandel Fiddletown Rinaldi Vineyard Orcio 2021.

We also have an outstanding array of Napa Valley red wines this week from two vintages of Outpost, a French-owned property on high-elevation Howell Mountain. Jim gave a slight edge to the structured 2021s over the gorgeous 2022s while rating six cabernet-based wines and two zinfandels.

Scoring highest was the Outpost Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Howell Mountain True Vineyard 2021, a nearly perfect wine that is plush yet muscular and sinewy at the same time.

The Outpost Wines Napa Valley Howell Mountain True Vineyard Immigrant 2021 bottling, a blend of roughly a third each of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot, was almost as impressive as the pure cab yet more layered, with black fruits, bitter chocolate and a luscious feel.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES IN THE RHEINHESSEN

In spite of the tendency in recent years to vineyard consolidation, vineyard holdings in Germany remain as fragmented as in Burgundy. This situation means that in many regions there are lots of small producers, and Senior Editor Stuart Pigott’s job is made more daunting by the fact that since the last turn of the century so many of them have become ambitious about wine quality.

The Schatzel winery in Nierstein in the Rheinhessen region is a good example of this. A generation ago, the wines were conventional and rarely exciting. But then Kai Schatzel took over the winery from his father and began experimenting. More than a decade later, now working as a team with Jule Eichblatt, the result is one of Germany’s leading producers of natural wines. Or are they alternative wines? Revolutionary wines? Stuart feels that they all fit, and Kai Schatzel didn’t reject any of these descriptions when he tasted with Stuart recently.

For many in the natural wine scene, the most important thing about the dry wines from Schatzel will be that they have no added sulfites. No wine is entirely free of sulfites, but some of these are as low as you can get. However, for Schatzel and Eichblatt the real fascination is exploring a whole new cosmos of wine aromas and flavors, as well as pushing some boundaries. As Schatzel put it, "sheep in the vineyards, but also drones, and no Rudolf Steiner nostalgia!"

No wine reflects this philosophy more comprehensively than the Schätzel Riesling Rheinischer Landwein Re. It is non-vintage, because this is a limited-edition cuvee of dry rieslings from the 2016 to 2023 vintages. It has incredibly deep lees character, which is not surprising for a wine that had an average of five years maturation on the lees in 600-liter Stockinger oak casks. The alcohol is just 10.5 percent, because the grapes were picked as soon as adequate physiological ripeness was reached in order to preserve the natural acidity. The aromas of quince, old-fashioned pear varieties and dried herbs are striking. Stuart estimates that when distributed, Wine-Searcher will give close to $300 as the average price for this unique wine.

Schatzel and Eichblatt are no dogmatists and also produce riesling Kabinett wines with added sulfites. “We have to do that, because there’s no other way to make them,” Schatzel commented. “Likewise, all our analytically dry wines are bottled unfiltered, but we can’t do that with riesling Kabinett.”

There are not many winemakers anywhere who are this pragmatic, but also as uncompromising about what they do.

The light-bodied Schätzel Riesling Rheinhessen Hipping Kabinett 2023 is the most exciting German wine that Stuart has tasted recently. It is simultaneously juicy and very filigree with incredible flint and wet stone intensity, lemon crud, candied pineapple and peach blossom aromas. The super-vibrant finish shines as brightly as a tiny diamond. That's also quite an expensive wine, but the somewhat less complex and flinty Schätzel Riesling Rheinhessen Kabinett 2023 is a steal!

ASSYRTIKOS AND MORE FROM GREECE

We’ve been tasting Greek wines in our Hong Kong office over the past week, ranging from assyrtiko from the island of Santorini to Macedonian reds and whites further north. Some of the highlights for Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt included the Vassaltis Santorini Plethora Cuvée Heritage 2021 – an intensely savory, dense and mineral assyrtiko that has salty green-olive and seashell undertones alongside ash and beeswax aromas. Another assyrtiko from Vassaltis, the Alcyone Cuvée Mythologique 2022, also impressed with its fragrance and freshness, showing complex notes of spices, sliced pears, coriander and almonds.

Check out the other wines from assyrtiko in the notes below. The best have salty complexity, full body and excellent concentration, like those from Lantides Winery, Mikra Thira and Volcanic Slopes Vineyards. For a delicious Macedonian red, meanwhile, the Wine Art Estate Xinomavro Drama Idisma Drios Xi 2020 is a mellow example of the xinomavro grape. It’s medium- to full-bodied with a tasty combination of sweet fruit and earthy tobacco undertones.

– Jim Gordon, Stuart Pigott and Claire Nesbitt 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.

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.