The New Heights of Burgundy, Plus a Cove of Harmony for Pinot Noir and Syrah: Weekly Tasting Report (June 26-July 2)

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott and Executive Editor Jim Gordon shifted into the second stage of tasting Burgundy’s 2022 vintage over the past week and they continued to find excellence in both the red and white wines, from regional appellations to grand crus.

But this isn’t just a story of business as usual, because a new category of wines has emerged that demands attention: High-Altitude Burgundy, or wines from steeper elevations that have gained enormously in importance due to climate change.

For white wines, this was most obvious at Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson in Saint Romain. Young winemaker Frederic Buisson is already an expert at growing the grapes for and vinifying the wines of this new category, and the Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson Saint-Romain Sous la Château 2022 is a chardonnay masterpiece with fabulous concentration and minerality.

Among the high-altitude reds, the Domaine Boris Champy Hautes-Côtes-de-Beaune Bignon 421 2022 stands out. It grew in a vineyard 421 meters above sea level and has wonderful wild berry aromas, soft tannins and an extremely long finish. This is an astonishing achievement when you consider that the first vintage for Champy at this winery was 2019.

The very highest-rated wines are from world-famous grand cru vineyards, and of these the Domaine Georges Comte de Vogüé Musigny Grand Cru Vieilles Vignes 2022, with its incredible finesse and extraordinary textural complexity, is the best wine from this famous domaine since the great Musigny Grand Cru 1990. And because this domaine is the main owner of this grand cru, with slightly more than seven hectares of this site, this wine enjoys global distribution under its new winemaker, Jean Lupatelli, and longstanding director, Jean-Luc Pepin!

No less impressive was the dramatically contrasting Domaine Faively Mazis-Chambertin Grand Cru 2022, which has gigantic concentration, precision and originality (in the sense of expressing its place of origin). It is a ravishingly beautiful power pack with decades of life ahead of it. And because this producer owns 1.4 hectares of this site, it is also not an extremely limited-production wine. It is a career high point for chief winemaker Jerome Flous.

Another striking aspect of Stuart’s tastings was the extraordinary success of some wines from the Cote Chalonnaise, which is often regarded as the third most important Burgundy Cotes after the Cote de Nuits and Cote de Beaune.

It’s hard to decide which of the two stars from Domaine du Cellier aux Moines is the more important. Certainly, the red Domaine du Cellier aux Moines Givry 1er Cru Clos du Cellier aux Moins Les Dessus 2022 is compelling proof that the Cote Chalonnaise is capable of greatness. It has a stunningly beautiful nose and a wonderful harmony with a fine biscuity texture on the palate. It is the best so far from this producer, which has gone from strength to strength in recent years.

The red Les Héritiers Saint-Genys Mercurey 1er Cru Clos Marcilly Cuvée Clovis 2022 backs this up, expressing Cote Chalonnaise greatness in a darker and more dangerous way. This under-the-radar producer also stunned Stuart with red and white masterpieces from the Cote de Beaune.

And if you wonder whether this subregion of Burgundy can also stun with white wine greatness, the Domaine du Cellier aux Moins Montagny 1er Cru Les Charmelottes Vieilles Vignes '1939' 2022 shows that it can. This amazing white Burgundy has a wealth of flint and oyster shell character plus bright pineapple fruit. It comes from vines planted in 1939. And because the status drinkers of Burgundy wines look down on the Cote Chalonnaise, prices remain friendly.

CALIFORNIA'S COVE OF HARMONY

The Mendocino Ridge AVA is about as extreme as wine-growing gets in the United States. On California’s chilly, rocky North Coast, at elevations of 1,200 feet and above and just three miles from the Pacific, is where Jason Drew planted his flag – and his vines – in 2000, convinced he could make elegant, individualistic pinot noir and syrah in this remote, windy place.

Now he has convinced us, too. Drew’s 2022 wines demonstrate that both varieties can excel in the same appellation.

The two grapes are similar in some ways. They express their terroir especially well, and they are best when not too ripe and not too heavy. But they rarely, if ever, come from the same terroir. There is no such thing as a Northern Rhone pinot noir or a Cote de Nuits syrah, for example. Drew’s wines, however, change that calculation.

The Drew Syrah Mendocino Ridge Valenti Ranch 2022, sourced from a  small, sloping vineyard a few miles from Drew’s estate vines, is the highest-rated of our California wines in this report. It is crunchy, tight and concentrated, with only 13.4 percent alcohol and vivid acidity. But there are also three highly-rated Drew 2022 pinot noirs, one from the same Valenti Ranch as the syrah and two from Jason and his wife Molly Drew’s home property, Faite de Mer Farm.

One of them, the Drew Pinot Noir Mendocino Ridge Faite de Mer Farm Field Selections 2022, almost tastes like a Cote Rotie syrah. This is Drew's boldest-tasting pinot, and although it’s technically light-bodied at 12.7 percent alcohol, it is packed with black plums on top of red cherries, rhubarb and light smoky accents.

Also beautiful are the restrained elegance of the Drew Chardonnay Mendocino Ridge Faite de Mer Farm Radiolaria 2022, as well as Drew’s other 2022 pinot noirs from the Anderson Valley, which are slightly softer and richer.

In our Hong Kong office, we’ve been tasting a range of wines from across Italy, from Piedmont in the north to Tuscany in the center and Sicily in the south. From the latter, a couple of wines stood out from the volcanic region of Etna, where nerello mascalese and nerello cappuccio are planted at high altitude around the volcano. These grapes can produce firm yet elegant reds, such as the Tenute dei Ciclopi Etna Rosso Contrada Feudo di Mezzo 2021, which is a single-vineyard (“contrada”) bottling from vines planted at 600 meters on Etna’s northern slopes. It’s perfumed and pretty, showing notes of nutmeg, blood oranges and licorice, and is structured and firm on the palate.

Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt was even more impressed with Tenute dei Ciclopi’s Etna Rosso Piede Franco Quota 900 2021. ("Piede franco” means own-rooted, or ungrafted, vines.) Only 1,180 bottles were produced from old nerello mascalese and nerello cappuccio vines planted inside an old crater at 934 meters altitude. It’s a tight, elegant and zesty wine with lots of character, crunchy tannins and a spicy finish. Both wines should age nicely, if you can get your hands on them.

From Spain, meanwhile, the striking Gonzalez Byass Jerez Tio Pepe Cuatro Palmas Amontillado NV is one of the most exemplary sherrys we have ever tasted, demonstrating how a rare, top-quality dry sherry – a fino that morphed into an amontillado during aging – can also be one of the most complex, thought-provoking wines in the world. In the eyes of Senior Editor Zekun Shuai, it’s “a wine for thinkers” – one that lingers for minutes on the palate, creating a dry but rich and nutty crescendo at the finish.

The wine comes from a single sherry cask and was aged for more than 50 years, with only half a cask bottled. It shows incredible concentration with unparalleled complexity after the lengthy biological and oxidative aging. As the “flor” (a veil of yeast that makes a sherry a sherry) of the wine "died" during the extremely long aging, it turned into an amontillado, making it tangy, extremely long and powerful, and basically irresistible. Also don’t miss Gonzalez Byass’s Tres Palmas, Dos Palmas and Una Palma, which are all fino-style sherries that show outstanding quality but with less aging time.

Zekun also found another outstanding graciano wine in his tastings over the past week. Graciano is considered an underdog grape in Rioja because of its low-yielding quality with high acidity, deep color and rustic tannins. But it may be time to take another look – especially if you like rich, full-bodied and structured reds with bright, high acidity and lifted peppery black fruit, all of which can be found in the Amaren Graciano Rioja 60 2019. The wine is part of a project Juan Luis Cañas Herrera of Bodegas Luis Cañas started in 2016 to make terroir-transparent wines, and this graciano exemplifies the level of quality they are trying to reach.

VALTELLINA's 'NEBBIOLO DELLE ALPI'

If wine regions were measured in terms of their beauty, Valtellina would rank right at the top. Its 820 hectares of steep, terraced vineyards run through a valley of nearly 120 kilometers that reaches 800 meters in altitude at its peak. The sandy loam soils found there are mainly the result of a retreating glacier, and the morainic terraces, some on glacially smoothed rocks, are a unique natural spectacle.

Generally, thanks to the mitigating influence of Lake Como, Valtellina's five subzones go from the warmest to the coolest, starting with Maroggia at the beginning of the valley, then Sassella, Grumello, Inferno, and Valgella. The wines from Maroggia are more approachable than the others, and those from Valgella are leaner but also very elegant.

Nebbiolo grapes, known as chiavennasca in Valtellina, at one time needed greater concentration from the "appassimento” process (partial dehydration) to produce great wines, but things are a different today, as shown in Valtellina Superiore wines.

Danilo Drocco, a leading oenologist in Valtellina, told Senior Editor Aldo Fiordelli that the region's wines today resemble Barolos made by the renowned Prunotto winery in the 1960s in that they come from vineyards with low yields, which heightens tannin quality. Among our tastings, the offerings of Arpepe, a cooperative winery, confirmed this.

Their Arpepe Valtellina Superiore Sassella Rocce Rosse Riserva 2016, from a vineyard in Sassella with a southeast exposure, is one of the most elegant and complex wines from the valley. Arpepe's Ultimi Raggi Riserva 2016 comes from a higher-altitude (600 meters) vineyard with a western exposure, and it shows the sort of thickness and structure that will perform well in the long haul.

Among the newer Valtellina wineries, Tenuta Scersce stands out for the balance and finesse of its wines, in particular its Petrato 2021, another wine from Sassella, which has silky tannins and a super-graceful floral profile.

Balgera, one of the Valtellina’s sustainable producers, is impressive for its detailed and savory wines, like the Pizaméi Riserva 2016, which is from Valgella, one of coolest parts of the valley. The redcurrant fruit character here is suggestive of the cooler and higher subzone, and the licorice and smoky complexity together with refined tannins complete the whole picture of a youthful wine with plenty of freshness and elegance, as we would expect from the best “Nebbiolo delle Alpi.”

– Stuart Pigott, Jim Gordon, Claire Nesbitt, Zekun Shuai 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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