Weekly Tasting Report (Feb 8-14): Penfolds’ Cali wines, Global blends

Today’s report includes the world launch of California wines and global blends from Australia’s formidable winery, Penfolds. I tasted the wines on February 4 with Penfolds’ veteran winemaker Peter Gago over Zoom and it was a memorable tasting to say the least. We tasted together the Penfolds Quantum Bin 98 and Bin 149, which are global blends of wines from Australia and California, and the Bin 704 and Bin 600, which are pure California wines.

I had flashbacks to my winemaking days when I created One Wine One World in the cellar of Mexican winemaker Hugo d’Acosta near Ensenada in Baja California. It was a whimsical idea of blending wines from three countries to emphasize the wines' points in common instead of their differences, and to explore if the wines show harmony and quality. I made about 700 cases of both a red and white. It was for charity and was even served to Pope Benedict XVI and a group of Bishops during a lunch in Birmingham, England. Check out this video from Decanter back in 2010. (I had longer hair then!) It also covers some points about why I left The Wine Spectator a decade ago and what I learned from my global winemaking endeavor.

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As for the Penfolds global blends, Gago explained that the reds were produced mostly by chance when they were blending their California wines in the offices of Beringer in Napa with his American team at the Treasury Wine Estates. It happened during a calibration session with winemakers and he happened to blend some 149 Napa cabernet with some A grade South Australian cabernet and they ended up pretty close to the current blend in the bottle.

“Jaws dropped,” Gago said. “How did that happen, everyone said. It was the essence of blending. It wasn’t intentional … we had no intention of making a wine of the world. We tripped over that.”

I like the Quantum Bin 98 more than the Bin 149, which makes sense considering the large price difference – respectively $700 and $149 a bottle. Only a few thousand bottles will be available of the former. Both wines show intensity and complexity in a lush and balanced way.

The California wines are more typical but with a polish and focus that Penfolds always delivers in its top Australian wines. Some of the Penfolds tweaks in winemaking that Gago revealed included short fermentations on the skins in barrels, some American oak barrels from Australian coopers, and extensive quality assessment and classification tastings with the American team. “It was the pursuit of a certain quality level and house style too,” Gago said.

The Penfolds Bin 600 and Bin 704 are well priced for outstanding quality California wines at $50 and $70 a bottle, respectively. The Napa blend is a combination of mountain fruit with some valley floor sources. “This says we love the fruit [of California]. We love the microclimates. We love the vineyards and we want to dabble with that. And we have,” Gago added.

Watch James taste the new Australia-California blends and pure California wines from Penfolds with veteran winemaker Peter Gago.

Other wines covered in this report include a sensational syrah from New Zealand, Bilancia Syrah Hawkes Bay La Collina 2019. It’s elegant and detailed like no other syrah this year. We just released our complete New Zealand report from tastings mostly last fall by Nick Stock, contributing editor. Check out all the scores if you are subscriber.

We also rated a few dozen more 2018 Bordeaux. One in particularly worth mentioning is the Château Les Carmes-Haut-Brion Pessac-Léognan 2018, which is incredibly polished and silky. It highlights the move by some winemakers in Bordeaux to focus more on softening and fine-tuning the texture of tannins in their wines. The 2018 Carmes used whole berry fermentations in slightly more than half of its production and the process, which is better known in Burgundy or the Rhone Valley, really left its mark. Check out my tasting note if you subscribe.

The process of whole berry fermentations is also taking hold in Argentina and I found most of the reds tasted last week from the country – 193 in total – very balanced and fruity without too much concentration, wood or tannins. This could be a result of the outstanding quality of recent vintages such as 2018, 2019 and 2020. But I really sense that Argentine winemakers are trying to step away from overly structured and overdone wines toward finer and more delicious reds.

 

This underlying precision and balance is also highlighted in my three top wines from Mendoza last week: Bodega Mendel Malbec Luján de Cuyo Single Vineyard 2019, Bodega Mendel Malbec Mendoza Finca Remota 2019, and Abremundos Mendoza Octava Alta Blend 2017. 

I also tasted a range of Loire Valley reds and whites from Thierry Germain that I bought from Kerry Wines in Hong Kong. The top cabernet francs and chenins were excellent and I appreciated that they were grown biodynamically and appeared to be produced in a low interventionist way. They show a wholesome and clear quality.

Another emotionally appealing wine was the Alfred Gratien Champagne Collection Memory 1996, a tiny production wine from this great vintage. Gratien overall makes about 300,000 bottles a year of Champagne and the wines are mostly made in barrel until bottled fermented and aged. This tiny release of a few hundred bottles was just disgorged last year. It's a special wine. Stay tuned for the video interview.

There are lots of unique and special wines in the list of almost 370 wines rated last week. I am sure you will find some you are going to want to drink now or in the future. Cheers.

- James Suckling, editor