Washington’s Powerful Reds and Alsace’s Mineral Masterpiece: Weekly Tasting Report (April 12-18)

Associate Editors Andrii Stetsiuk and Claire Nesbitt made it in person to Washington state last month during their extended tasting trip through the Pacific Northwest, tasting several hundred wines in Seattle and in Walla Walla.

Viticulture plays an increasingly significant role in the state’s agricultural sector, with five new AVAs coming into existence over the past few years – helped in part by global warming. As Averyl Mooney of the Washington State Wine Commission said, "I think climate change is working in our favor for sure because we're so far north that we can afford to get warmer. That’s totally fine."

Washington’s wine scene is diverse and growing, but cabernet sauvignon continues to be the cornerstone, and there’s no greater benchmark than the wines of Quilceda Creek. The 2020 cabernets from Quilceda Creek, including their Columbia Valley 2020 and Horse Heaven Hills Tchelistcheff 2020, show power and depth with incredible tannin structure, yet they’re also polished, seamless and long.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF THE USA 2022

2020 was a challenging year in Washington, as it was for much of the west coast’s wine regions, because of the smoke at the end of the growing season. Yet different areas were affected in different ways. "We had a great growing season, dry and warm, and berries were smaller than usual – about 10 to 15 percent smaller,” said Paul Golitzin, the director of winemaking at Quilceda Creek. “When the smoke arrived, it didn't stay but rather blew through. Maybe it just delayed ripening by blocking some UV light. But we had a long enough season."

Their Columbia Valley 2020 is a great example of what Washington cabernet can be: encompassing and wide on the palate with layers of fine-grained tannins, as well as being long and deep.

As for Washington's syrahs and grenache, there’s no greater master than Brennon Leighton, the rock 'n' roll winemaker of K Vintners. He keeps blowing our minds with such offerings as the Syrah Yakima Valley Motor City Kitty 2020 and Grenache Walla Walla Valley The Boy 2020. He follows a more reductive winemaking style to keep the freshness and purity of fruit intact.

"Everything we do is thick staves,” Leighton told Andrii and Claire. “On some wines, we're about 38 to 40 millimeters thick. So we like the thicker stave. Everything we do is extremely reductive. We don't rack any of our barrels until it's time to bottle. I truly believe that lees are what give wines their vitality and their life, and I think they're the thing that kind of gives them longevity. And so we use them a lot.”

One of the highlights of our Washington trip was meeting a Frenchman, Christophe Baron, who came to the United States seeking to grow pinot noir in Willamette Valley but ended up in Walla Walla creating his own version of Chateauneuf-du-Pape in Walla Walla’s the Rocks District. The wines he makes for Cayuse, Horsepower and Hors Categorie are almost like thought-provoking pieces of art.

"I'm not a winemaker, I'm a vigneron,” he told us. “And you know the difference between a vigneron and a winemaker? It is more like being an artist. So, therefore, there is no winery here but the wine studio."

His syrahs and grenaches, like the Cayuse Vineyards Syrah Walla Walla Valley Bionic Frog 2020 and Horsepower Grenache Walla Walla Valley Fiddleneck Vineyard 2020, are pure expressions of the terroir: deep, meaty and spicy with a purity of fruit and incredible length.

In Bordeaux, James Suckling tasted the Château d'Yquem Bordeaux "Y" Ygrec 2021 with the president of d'Yquem, Pierre Lurton, and estate manager Lorenzo Pasquini. This rare and outstanding white wine is made from the same terroir and vines as Chateau d’Yquem’s flagship Sauternes wines.

“We want to be very precise on picking the grapes and pressing in order to achieve freshness and purity, in the same time keeping a unique Yquem style,” Pasquini told James. As a result, the “Y” Ygrec 2021 shows a very complex character, with depth and longevity. Pure fruit with spicy and mineral undertones and just a hint of sweetness at the end enhances its beauty.

There are also some top-rated Rioja wines to look out for in this report, including the Contino Rioja Viña del Olivo 2020 and CVNE’s terrific trio of the Rioja Imperial Gran Reserva 2017, Rioja Pagos de Viña Real La Virgen 2020 and Rioja Real de Asúa Carromaza 2020. All the tasting notes are below.

MINERAL MASTERPIECE

From his home near Frankfurt, Germany, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted the wines of Alsace winemaker Melanie Pfister in a Zoom session, and he found a “mineral masterpiece” from the rising star.

“The Mélanie Pfister Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Engelberg 2020 has a wonderful cool elegance in spite of the very warm, drought vintage,“ Stuart said. “As great as it is, it’s the overall high quality of her new wines that confirms Pfister’s arrival in the region’s first league.“

In line with the transformation of Alsace from being a region almost completely focused on dry whites to a major player in the sparkling wine, orange wine and pinot noir red fields, Pfister shone in all of these categories. Stuart said he loved the Mélanie Pfister Gewurztraminer Alsace Macération 2021: “I’m not a big orange wine drinker, but this is a deliciously bone-dry reinterpretation of an unfashionable grape, and this direction looks to be the future for Alsace gewurztraminer."

And to get a pinot noir from Burgundy with the concentration and velvety richness of the Mélanie Pfister Pinot Noir Alsace Hüt 2020, Stuart said, “you would have to go to one of the top producers and pay a pile of money for a premier cru or grand cru,” adding that the wine should age magnificently.

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Stuart has also been following the development of pinot noir reds from just across the Rhine in the Baden region of Germany since the 1980s. They are sometimes sold under the German synonym for pinot noir, spatburgunder.

“Shelter Winery brings together Germany’s rise as a pinot noir producer with the trend toward winemakers from non-wine backgrounds – in this case, a couple who both come from families with zero wine background,” Stuart said.

Hans-Bert Espe grew up in Osterode and Silke Wolf in Paderborn, both in the traditional beer-drinking north of Germany. “I was a hairdresser, before I got interested in wine," Espe said. “We were a real startup and our first cellar was a shelter for fighter jets on the abandoned Canadian air base in Lahr, hence our name. We still don’t own a tractor and our new winery also looks like a bunker!"

This unconventional approach worked from day one, with the first vintage (2003) attracting a lot of attention in the German wine scene. “Shelter Winery effortlessly mastered the first hot vintage of the modern period while some well-established producers floundered under the extreme conditions," Stuart said.

“Their new wines deserve attention, too. Although the very structured Shelter Winery Pinot Noir Baden N114 2020 is the most impressive of them, the Shelter Winery Pinot Noir Baden 2020 already has a wonderful, silky mouthfeel and excellent concentration. And the entry-level wines are all great values."

In our Hong Kong office, Associate Claire Nesbitt tasted newly launched vintage Champagnes from Billecart-Salmon and Rare. The Billecart-Salmon Champagne Cuvée Nicolas François 2008 is one of our top-scoring wines this week. It’s a tribute to the Champagne house’s founder and is nearly always a blend of 60 percent pinot noir and 40 percent chardonnay, as CEO Mathieu Roland-Billecart explained via Zoom. 2008 produced fresh and mineral wines with a sharp backbone of acidity, and the 2008 Nicolas Francois is showing both structure and softness after a lengthy 150 months of lees aging.

Another fantastic Champagne is the Rare Champagne 2013. It’s an elegant blend of 70 percent chardonnay and 30 percent pinot noir from the cold 2013 vintage, vinified in stainless steel with full malolactic conversion, and is showing fantastic freshness, with silky bubbles and lingering saline and mineral elements, as well as delicious pastry and toasty notes. Both Champagnes are beautiful to drink now or to cellar.

– Andrii Stetsiuk, 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.