Spain’s Cult Red Delivers Again: Weekly Tasting Report (Nov 30-Dec 6)

I was happy this week to finally taste and rate this year’s release from Dominio de Pingus. Spain’s cult red delivers a benchmark for the country year in and year out, and wine lovers and collectors around the world clamor to get their hands on a bottle. The Dominio de Pingus Ribera del Duero Pingus 2020 is a terrific young red with subtle yet powerful fruit and polished tannins that give it verve and intensity. I think it’s a step up from the already outstanding 2019.

“The 2019 was a very warm year and made a more massive wine,” owner and winemaker Peter Sisseck said by WhatsApp on Tuesday. “An early harvest did not help enough. I think 2020 came out very well. It is also a warm vintage, but we had very good spring rains that helped give added freshness. It shows the warm weather but in a more balanced way.”

It’s interesting what Sisseck says about 2020 because I also get that impression with the 2020 vintage compared with 2018 in Bordeaux. We are tasting hundreds of 2020 Bordeaux at the moment and will continue to do so for the next month or so in office in our Hong Kong, and the wines are showing lovely ripe fruit, but they have a little more balance and harmony than 2018. The 2019s are more linear and fresher than 2020 or 2018.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF THE WORLD 2022 AND OUR WINE OF THE YEAR

I noticed in 2021 when I rated more than 1,300 barrel samples from Bordeaux that the 2020s were slightly lower in alcohol than 2019 and 2018. It was the third hot and dry year in a row, and many producers understood that they needed to pick earlier to help reduce alcohol levels. For some it was their earliest harvest ever. But rain in mid-August helped mitigate the dryness, as did winter rains. Many chateau owners told me that their vineyards remained green through the growing season, suggesting that the drought was less of a problem.

The added difficulty of 2020 was COVID. Government quarantines and social-distancing rules complicated all aspects of vineyard and cellar work. Plus, people were sick with the virus and couldn’t go to work. Yet our tastings of more than 300 Bordeaux 2020 so far are very positive. The 275 tasting notes of Bordeaux 2020 in this report prove this.

We also tasted Purple Hands winery’s latest releases of pinot noirs from Oregon. Their single-vineyard wines from both Dundee Hills (such as Haakon Lenai, Latchkey and Kropf vineyards) and Yamhill-Carlton (Shea Vineyard) are planted to a range of clones from Pommard, Wadenswil, and a selection of Dijon clones, producing wines that are vibrant and bright, with very fine tannins and a cool minerality. Check out their flavorful and phenolic Dundee Hills chardonnay, too, from their Haakon Lenai Vineyard.

Senior editor Zekun Shuai tasted a few exciting reds over the past week from one of the most established producers in China, Grace Vineyard, which was founded in 1997 as one of the first boutique wineries in China by Hong Kong businessman C.K. Chan, who planted 80 hectares of vines in Shanxi’s loess plateau. Although it first captured international attention with its Bordeaux blends, Grace Vineyard today makes fresh and elegant chardonnays as well as outstanding marselans and aglianicos. But the continental monsoon climate Grace Vineyard faces means heavy summer rainfall has always been a problem that makes achieving consistency a difficult proposition.

“Consistency is the key, and the climates in Shanxi can be very variable,” said Grace’s head winemaker, Yean Lee, who first joined the team in 2006 as a cellar hand and recollects that his second vintage 2007 was so rainy that “before the harvest, the vineyard looked like a swimming pool.”

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF CHINA 2021

In 2011, Grace Vineyard decided to look elsewhere for consistency, and it was in Ningxia that they chose to lay the roots of the 67 hectares of vines in the town of Ganchengzi in Qingtongxia city, where they planted Bordeaux varieties and syrah. Today, their Deep Blue wine, a merlot-based Bordeaux blend, is a cross-regional red that combines the richness and color of Ningxia and the elegance and freshness of Shanxi, where alcohol is much lower and acidification is not necessary.

“2014 was the first vintage that we did this cross-regional blend, and the malolactic fermentation takes place in Shanxi,” Lee said. We have already rated Grace’s emblematic blend, the Grace Vineyard China Deep Blue 怡园深蓝葡萄酒 2020, which is a savory, well-rounded red that shows poise, finesse and fleshy red fruit. This week we tasted another one of their Ningxia offerings, the Grace Vineyard Syrah Cabernet Sauvignon Ningxia Interval 怡园酒庄留白干红葡萄酒 2020, which over-delivered in a rather difficult vintage with frost and some rains in Ningxia. The wine is spicy and almost full-bodied but not hefty, showing precise, fine-grained tannins, drinkability and length.

We also loved Grace’s merlot and cabernet franc, which are very varietal-expressive and, even more impressive, deliver great value for less than $30 a bottle in China. The Grace Vineyard Cabernet Franc Ningxia Tasya’s Reserve 怡园酒庄德熙珍藏品丽珠干红葡萄酒 2020 shows typical sweet tobacco leaf and red currant character from a fully ripened cabernet franc, but it remains refined, linear and well-structured.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman; 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.