Village Treasures from China, Futo’s Stunning Reds and Argentina’s Old Vine Marvel: Weekly Tasting Report (Feb 8-14)

I’ve had a number of excellent interviews and tastings over the last week both in person and via Zoom. The best so far has been with Maxence Dulou, the winemaker of Moet Hennessy’s Ao Yun in China. His red from 2018 is the best wine we have ever tasted from China, out of the 300 from the country we’ve rated over the last 12 months. The Ao Yun Shangri-La 2018 shows fantastic clarity and precision as well as fine structure and length. It’s setting the quality bar high for wine in China.

“It will take decades to find the full potential for our terroir. It will take a long time, but we are moving quickly!” the Frenchman said during our tasting in Hong Kong. I also really enjoyed his new chardonnay from one of the village vineyards that was used in the Ao Yun blend. I tasted it against a 2019 Chablis from William Fevre, and it compared beautifully, with a similar green apple, mineral and lemon character of the French white. Check out our story on it from Monday.

This morning I had a Zoom session with Napa Valley’s Tom Futo and his winemaker, Jason Exposto, tasting their 2019 range of reds, and their three wines under the Futo label were absolutely stunning. The purity of fruit and fine tannin structure were incredible. Jason explained that 2019 gave them perfect grapes from a perfect growing season that enabled them to pick from the first week of September to mid-October.

They had the opportunity to pick dozens of parcels of their 22 acres of vineyards in Oakville and Stag’s Leap District at just the right moments and maturity, and made 42 different lots of wine and then blended them for each of the three bottlings. I like the way they de-emphasize the wood in the maturation, with less new wood, larger-sized barrels and even some amphora from Tuscany. If you are a subscriber, you can see which bottling I rated a perfect 100 points. Stay tuned for the Zoom interview.

READ MORE: TOP 100 VALUE WINES OF 2021 ($35 OR LESS!)

I did another Zoom tasting last night with Marcelo Pelleriti, one of the best winemakers in Argentina. My team and I have already rated close to 400 wines from the country, and we keep on saying to ourselves that this year’s new releases run the range of excellence from inexpensive clean and super-drinkable bottles to balanced and well-structured gems.

Pelleriti’s 1853 Old Vine Estate Malbec Mendoza Selected Parcel 2019 is a great example of the magic of Argentina reds at reasonable prices. It’s hard to think where you can buy a 95-point red made from vineyards planted in 1910 that costs about $24 a bottle, or even less. This wine shows impressive blackberry and bark with mushroom undertones, and a layered and tight texture.

There are going to be many great buys from the more than 1,500 wines we expect to rate from Argentina this year. The country has had four excellent vintages in a row – 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Pelleritti says the last three are particularly outstanding and came from dry and hot growing seasons. I was in Mendoza for all four harvests and it’s true about the heat, and yet the wines retained so much freshness, which could also be because winemakers are picking earlier and not going for overblown, high-alcohol wines. More to come on Argentina in the coming weeks.

HERITAGE CLONES

I also did a long in-person and Zoom tasting with the owner and winemaker of Sonoma’s Donum. Owner Allan Warburg lives in Hong Kong and was in town, so we did a remote tasting with his winemaker in Sonoma. It was an eye-opening experience, particularly with the small bottlings of heritage pinot clones, including Calera, Swan and Martini.

I wish more winemakers in Northern California would make wines from the clones that were established by some of the historical winemakers of the state. Try to find some of the Donum Pinot Noir Sonoma County Carneros Mikado Tree Single-Block Reserve 2019 (Swan clone) or Donum Pinot Noir Sonoma County Russian River Valley Heritage Clones Single-Block Reserve 2019 (blend of clones) to see what I mean.

Meanwhile, we are getting to the end of our tastings of 2019 Bordeaux, 2018 Barolo and the Rhone Valley. You have already heard enough about the excellent 2019 vintage for Bordeaux and how the reds show freshness and brightness and early drinkability, yet they have the structure for aging like other classic Bordeaux vintages.

The 2018 vintage in Barolo seems to be an early drinking year as well, but we wouldn’t recommend putting many bottles away in your cellar. It will be a good year for drinking, like 2014, while you wait for the recent trilogy there: 2015, 2016 and 2017. Rhone appears to have made many excellent wines in the hot and dry 2019 and 2020 vintages. The key was to keep freshness in the reds and whites.

There’s lots to digest in this report and plenty to like. Back to the tasting room.

– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor