Weekly Tasting Report (May 10-16, 2021): Napa On My Mind, Knockout Washington Syrahs and a Never-Ending Bounty From Bordeaux

Three perfect wines from Napa Valley’s Harlan family highlight this report on more than 700 wines that my team of tasters and I rated last week. It not only spotlights how great the 2018 vintage is for California, especially Napa, but it is also our biggest Weekly Tasting Report ever. I have been writing about the 2018 vintage for more than a year as a benchmark for the sunshine state because it made such beautiful and balanced wines, with ultrafine tannins that add to their wonderful transparency and freshness.

“What I like about 2018 is I think that there is even more transparency than 2016,” Cory Empting, the winemaker of Harlan, Bond and Promontory, said during a Zoom tasting and interview. “I think the ‘16 has a little bit more weight to it, more flesh to it. I think they both are going to have an extremely long life, but I think ‘18 is going to be more svelte, with more length and focus, and the ‘16 will have a little bit more fuzziness in its early youth. But the aging potential of both those wines [is] extremely long.”

We also rated exciting California reds from Alejandro Bulgheroni, Helen Keplinger, Philippe Melka and Nicholas Allen. In addition, we began our Washington state tastings with some knockout syrahs and grenache from K Vintners – all 2018s. Plus, there are some awesome Champagnes from the house of de Venoge and a super red from Margaret River’s Howard Park, not to mention some serious bottles from Antica Terra and Lillian in Oregon.

But 2018 Napa is really on my mind at the moment. I have to ask if this vintage really is a new benchmark for the valley, with such clarity and harmonious structure. I asked Empting what he thought. (The subject is part of a webinar I’m hosting for Napa Valley Vintners on June 3 at 7 p.m. Pacific Time.)

“Let’s do that 10-year retrospective and see one day,” Empting said. “Right now I am a big fan of the 2018s, but I think the '16 has that extra flesh that tends to age really well – like you see can see how that can age really well. And the ‘18 is a little bit more on the razor’s edge, maybe like ‘89 and ‘90 Bordeaux.

“But if it follows that perfect razor’s edge, I think in some ways for me it’s more of a benchmark because there’s more difficulty in that. But I think there’s going to be a lot of pleasure with the ‘16s, so we’ll see with time.”

Although I haven’t tasted any samples yet, Empting mentioned that they were able to make wines at all the Harlan family estates in 2020 despite terrible wildfires during harvest time – unlike several other California wineries that were not as fortunate. Empting and Will Harlan said they began picking their grape crop earlier than usual – at the moment the first fires began on Pritchard Hill – as a “gamble” in case the fires got worse. As it turns out, that bet paid off big time, and both are incredibly happy with the results.

“We are wrapping our heads around it,” said Will Harlan, who added that the wines show superb balance, freshness and intensity. Empting said he thought their 2020s could be considered a new benchmark.

Whether 2020 is also a reference point for Bordeaux remains a question mark, but there were certainly thousands of outstanding wines produced in the vintage. I am finally at the end of our weekly updates on 2020 Bordeaux barrel samples, with hundreds of ratings including those in this report such as the potentially perfect Pavie and superb Leoville Las Cases, L’If, Bellevue Mondotte, Nenin, La Conseillante and Figeac.

The overall 2020 Bordeaux en primeur report, with more than 1,200 tasting notes, will be out very soon. Wines are already being released on the market as futures, with prices higher than in 2019, but they are still surprisingly attractive despite the upward trend.

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott began his tastings of the most recently released Austrian wines, and he is happy with the quality of most of the almost 150 wines he went through. The 2020 vintage is a solid follow-up to the hot 2019s, with the quality of the rieslings much more consistent than the gruner veltliners.

One of the Austrian wines Stuart tasted, the Schloss Gobelsburg Tradition Heritage NV, is non-vintage – a blend of 31 vintages ranging from 2017 back to 1970, from nine grape varieties, mostly gruner veltliner and riesling. Stuart found it “deep, complex and delicious in a totally unique way,” and said that drinking it made him feel as though he were “stepping into a time machine where rich and delicate elements, and mature and more youthful characteristics, mingle in a tantalizing and totally fascinating way.”

We also rated dozens of Barbarescos from the 2018 and 2017 vintages. The latter was a very hot and dry year but still managed to produce nicely framed and fresh nebbiolos in the region of Barbaresco – and Barolo, for that matter. This was primarily due to the cool nights in August before the harvest in September. The 2018 is a fresher and more balanced year.

And we are just about done with almost 1,000 Chilean wines rated this year. We found many 2018 and 2019 wines coming on the market to be of outstanding quality, while the hotter and less consistent 2020s are not on the same level. Stay tuned for the coming report on Chile.

As I said, we are looking forward to tasting about 600 new wines from Washington state over the next week and we expect to find many great wines, especially syrahs, from the great 2018 vintage.

“The 2018 was like this perfect vintage where you had a fairly warm beginning, but it never got too warm in the summer and then it cooled down nicely in the ripening season and it never got too cold and it never rained so significantly that it created a problem,” said Brennon Leighton, vice president of winemaking and vineyards for House of Smith, which produces such brands as K Vintners and Substance.

“So it was one of those perfect vintages. You didn’t have a huge amount of sugar accumulation. You had no loss of acid. And you still got your flavor maturity and tannin maturity,” he said. “But 2020 may be the best vintage I have ever been a part of.”

There are so many great wines out there in the market at the moment. Check out the list below to get a better idea.

– James Suckling, editor in chief

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the previous week by James and 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. 

To find the Bordeaux 2020 en primeur notes, for example, sort by country and scroll down to ‘France’.