The To Kalon Edge, an Uncommon Port and Pristinely Tasmanian

The JamesSuckling.com tasting team rated 456 wines from six countries over the past week, with our top highlights showing up in California, Portugal and Australia. The pair of perfect-scoring cabernet sauvignons Executive Editor Jim Gordon uncovered in Napa Valley begin a new chapter in the history of what is possibly the region’s most famous vineyard site. We’re talking about Schrader wines, specifically two 2023 reds grown in the To Kalon Vineyard on the west side of the Oakville appellation of Napa. Jim tasted the new releases with Schrader winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown.

Jim was blown away by both the Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville To Kalon Vineyard Heritage Clone 2023, which is explosive in flavor yet reserved and tannic, needing more time to mature, and Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville To Kalon Vineyard Old Sparky 2023. This one tastes of almost-sweet fruit, chocolate, mint and cherry cream.

Each offers the awesome, almost-thick but velvety and mouth-coating tannins that made Oakville west cabernet sauvignon famous. It’s nothing new for these wines to receive rave reviews and insane scores from James or Jim, who have been familiar with the 400-acre-plus To Kalon property for more than 40 years.

What’s different for the 2023 vintage is that Schrader no longer uses grapes grown in the 83-acre portion of To Kalon owned by Andy Beckstoffer. Brown, the winemaker, now selects only from the majority portion of the historic vineyard, which is operated by the adjacent Robert Mondavi Winery and Opus One under the ownership of Constellation Brands.

“The Schrader lineup has been completely reimagined beginning with 2023,” Brown said. “It was all Beckstoffer in the past and now it’s all on the Mondavi side.” The brand became famous under founder Fred Schrader for its full-blown cabernets crafted from Beckstoffer grapes.

The Beckstoffer To Kalon vineyard is bordered on three sides by Mondavi’s acreage, which is much larger. So when Constellation bought the Schrader brand in 2017, the wheels began turning for Schrader to transition out of the Beckstoffer acres.

Brown, of course, is psyched about what he and the Constellation vineyard team have accomplished with the new Schrader wines. He talked about the different “neighborhoods” within To Kalon, some that are locally famous – like the I Block old-vine sauvignon blanc vines and the Monastery Block cabernet sauvignon vines.

“All of them are not created equal, though. Some are not that interesting,” Brown said. “But I challenge anyone to not make great stuff from the Monastery block. And the heritage clone was well known for decades.”

Look for the Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville Monastery Block 2023 in the tasting notes below, with another impressively high rating.

The perfect-scoring Schrader Old Sparky 2023 was blended in small quantities from the best barrels of the best blocks in Mondavi To Kalon, Brown said. It is bottled only in magnums.

The long and undramatic 2023 growing season in California has already proved itself for well-balanced and structured chardonnays and pinot noirs, yet 2023 Bordeaux-style reds like these from Schrader are shaping up to be equally as delicious and well-balanced.

“People think of 2023 as structured, and it is,” Brown said. “But the tannins are super ripe, since the grapes gained good tannin maturity during a long ripening period. So for me, as big as the wines are they are not chunky or four-squared or anything like that. The vintages you don’t remember as a winemaker are always the best vintages. Because you don’t remember any trauma at all.”

Two 2023 Napa Valley wines from Stalworth, a relatively new valley-floor brand from the Hess-Persson family, would have been right at the top of this week’s results if it weren’t for Schrader.

The Stalworth Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Rutherford 2023 is opulent in flavor yet light on its feet. The Stalworth Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Oakville 2023 is the first Stalworth release from Oakville and offers all the cocoa, baking spices, black cherries and blueberries you could possibly want in a dry wine.

An Uncommon Port

During his recent trip to Portugal, Senior Editor Jacobo García Andrade had the chance to taste one of the best Ports of the 2022 vintage – the Niepoort Port Bioma Vinha Velha 2022. This is not your typical Port from that year. It comes from a single, old co-planted vineyard in Covas do Douro. If we were in Burgundy, its mid-slope location would certainly make it a Grand Cru. But in the Douro, its varietal mix, precise location and the way it has been preserved make it truly singular.

The wine spends around 30 months in pipas – traditional 650-liter oak casks. Unlike a regular vintage Port, which is released in its second year, Bioma appears in its third – as was common in bygone days. The grapes are foot-trodden at Niepoort’s Vale de Mendiz winery, fortified, and left to stabilize. Aging takes place in the coolest part of the cellar, unlike the warmer lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia. The result is a Port with nerve that, combined with the concentration of 2022, makes it a unique and compelling wine.

Another highlight was Graham’s Port 80 Year Old Tawny, a special edition blended by Charles Symington in homage to his father, Peter Symington. Made from a rare selection of casks dating back to the 1940s, this is a profound old tawny that deserves attention.

A pair of single-vineyard reds from Antonio Madeira in the Dao – the Vinha da Serra 2022 and A Centenaria 2022 – also stood out. These two tiny vineyards, along with Os Granitos, make up the trio of single-vineyard reds he produces from the granite hillsides of the Serra da Estrela. A Centenaria comes from a 140-year-old vineyard planted in 1890, containing about 45 different varieties, with jaen (mencia) predominating. Vinha da Serra, Madeira’s highest-altitude vineyard, features a higher proportion of tinta amarela. The grapes are destemmed and aged for two winters. These are elegant, characterful, and mysterious wines – thrilling expressions of the Dao’s Serra da Estrela subregion.

Tucking into Tasmania

Associate Editor Ryan Montgomery's tastings focused on Australia's cool-climate region of Tasmania. Sitting about 240 kilometers south of the mainland across the Bass Strait, the island’s pristine environment and maritime influence have helped establish it as a benchmark for modern Australian pinot noir and chardonnay. Once mostly known for its sparkling wines, Tasmania now commands attention for still wines that show clarity, energy and quiet intensity.

Stafano Lubiana, who in the early 1990s established his family estate on the banks of the Derwent River just north of Hobart, has been a major influence in this transformation. Among the first in Tasmania to adopt biodynamic practices, he has helped define a generation of winemakers focused on purity and texture. Today, his son Marco continues that legacy, crafting small-lot wines from select parcels in the Derwent and Huon Valleys that reflect the natural tension and transparency of Tasmania’s landscape.

From his office near Melbourne, Ryan tasted wines from both the Stefano Lubiana and Marco Lubiana labels, each sourced from the family’s estate vineyards. From the former, the Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir Tasmania La Roccia 2023 – the 2022 iteration of which was our Australian Wine of the Year last year – shows intense, perfumed aromas of dark cherries, raspberries and dried roses, finishing with a subtle, earth-driven complexity that places it among the finest pinots in the new world. The Marco Lubiana Pinot Noir Derwent Valley One Terroir 2022 follows suit and is showing beautifully. Fragrant, detailed and precise, it's a wine that will appeal to Burgundy lovers for its tension and restraint.

At the heart of the tasting was Tolpuddle Vineyard in the Coal River Valley, co-owned by Michael Hill Smith MW and Martin Shaw of Shaw + Smith. Its 2024 releases reaffirm why Tolpuddle remains a reference point for Australian pinot noir and chardonnay, with the latter taking this year’s top spot in our recently posted Top 100 Wines of Australia 2025. The Tolpuddle Pinot Noir Tasmania 2024 is equally as impressive as the chardonnay, showing deeply perfumed aromas with blue and black fruits, pomegranate, forest floor and dried herbs. The palate is silken, framed by rounded tannins and mineral-driven acidity, combining finesse with power. This is a Grand Cru-level pinot noir that will evolve beautifully over decades.

Further south in the Huon Valley, Jim Chatto continues to define the potential of Tasmania’s coolest vineyards. The Chatto Pinot Noir Tasmania Huon Valley Seven Inch 2024 is fragrant and lifted with red fruits, hibiscus and blood orange. The palate is tightly wound and textural, with bright acidity and fine tannins that finish savory and mineral. All of the wines released from the Chatto label carry both texture and structure with a real sense of purity and precision.

– Jim Gordon, Jacobo García Andrade and Ryan Montgomery contributed reporting.

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by the 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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