Weekly Tasting Report (Oct 5-11): All About the Brunellos, Scoring High Down Under and a Kiwi Wrap-up

This report covering our nearly 600 tastings over the past week contains a number of firsts for the year. The most obvious are the number of ratings for 2016 Brunello di Montalcino Riservas, the new releases from Napa Valley of the highly talked about 2019 vintage, and lots of Australia ratings, including many from Margaret River and Eden Valley.

We already know that the 2016 vintage was a great one for Brunello, following the superb 2015. It produced wines that are more structured and tannic than the great and complete Brunellos of 2015. They are wines built for long aging, but they are already joyous to taste now. The Brunello Riservas are usually selections of the best wines or parcels of vineyards from a winery, and they will be released on the market in January, a year after the normal bottlings.

TASTING CASTIGLION DEL BOSCO:  Massimo Ferragamo and Cecilia Leoneschi discuss their 2016 Brunello Riserva.

The two top wines of the past week’s tastings were 2016 Brunello Riservas: Eredi Fuligni Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2016 and Ciacci Piccolomini d'Aragona Brunello di Montalcino Vigna di Pianrosso Santa Caterina d'Oro Riserva 2016. These two wines are ethereal in their presence, with sleek and intense tannins and diverse and complex character. They evolve wonderfully in the glass as you taste them and show incredible depth and focus. Other top wines included San Filippo Brunello di Montalcino Le Lucére Riserva 2016, Castiglion del Bosco Brunello di Montalcino Millecento Riserva 2016 and La Magia Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2016. Check out the video interview, at left, of James with Massimo Ferragamo and winemaker Cecilia Leoneschi of Castiglion del Bosco discussing the 2016 Riserva as well as the tricky 2017 vintage.

This is your last chance to buy great Brunellos from 2016 with their January release, which we recommend if you love sangiovese from Italy’s most popular premium wine appellation. And be warned, the 2017 Brunellos are going to be nothing like the 2016s, at least in most cases. 2017 was a hot and dry grape-growing season, and it produced a much smaller crop with smaller berries and high sugars. The wines lack the balance of a great Brunello, with many showing a big and tannic structure. They will need a few years to lose some of their rough character but will never deliver the complexity and balance of the 2015s or the focus and structure of the 2016s.

We also tasted some more recent releases from Napa and were happy to review more 2019s, which have a typical Napa fruit character yet remain balanced and structured. We are excited about rating more reds from the valley given the back-to-back great vintages of 2018 and ‘19. It’s hard to say which is better at the moment. A video interview with winemaker Philip Titus and Cyril Chappellet of Chappellet Winery gives some insight into the differences between the two vintages.

AUSTRALIAN 'GREAT WHITES' AND MORE

Australian wines dominate this report, with our team in Hong Kong rating dozens of bottles from Western Australia while Contributing Editor Nick Stock reviewed hundreds of others, mostly from South Australia but also discovering some real gems from New South Wales and Tasmania. Hunter Valley delivered his top wines, with the latest release of Mount Pleasant’s Old Paddock & Old Hill Shiraz, a 2019, clearly shining thanks to its impressive depth and richness. But it’s great to see the trio of Tyrrell’s semillon rocking Nick’s world. They are very special whites with unique power and structure. Check out the tasting notes and scores for Tyrrell’s HVD, Johnno’s and Vat 1 offerings. We look forward to seeing them on the export market soon.

Also striking a high-scoring cord was Sons of Eden, first with its Shiraz Remus Old Vine 2018, which Nick said was “so very complex and fragrant with such impressive Eden Valley spice and blueberry fruit,” and also with two other shiraz wines from its Autumnus Single Vineyard, whose sandy and schist soils seem to bring out a peppery, spicy character. The wines, one from 2016 and one from 2012, are concentrated and will last for a decade or more.

And don’t miss a couple of Aussie “great whites” Nick rated, the Alkoomi Riesling Frankland River Heritage Series Hail 2015, and the Dandelion Vineyards Riesling Eden Valley Wonderland of the Eden Valley 2021. Both show wonderful freshness and intensity.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRALIA 2020

The Hong Kong team also enjoyed its Australia tastings, with Western Australia showing its power and focus. Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt discovered a “complex, smoky and vivid” chardonnay from Vasse Felix (the 2019 Heytesbury), as well as several very different but high-quality wines from Amato Vino, also in Margaret River, that showed both power and finesse. Its Savagnin Margaret River 2020 and Trousseau Margaret River 2020 were its best-rated wines last week, but the others are worth checking out, too, especially the Sangiovese 2020, which is a great execution of a grape that has taken time to find its place Down Under.

James also gave some high scores to Moss Wood’s Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River 2018, the Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec Margaret River Tom Cullity 2017, and the Goon Tycoons Shiraz Frankland River Bunch Boy 2020, the latter of which showed particularly enjoyable crunch and vibrancy.

The final New Zealand wines came through over the past week, and we wrapped up our tastings in a special report you can read here. Pegasus Bay, Clos Henri, Dog Point, Pyramid Valley Vineyards, Rippon and Burn Cottage all produced excellent bottles that suggest the island nation has enjoyed wonderful back-to-back vintages in the 2020 and 2019. The best wines came from the usual grape suspects – pinot noir and sauvignon blanc – but there were also some rieslings, chardonnays and syrahs that were worth noting. Search for them in the notes below.

Finally, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott remains hard at work in Germany, tasting some of the best wines of his life! His top bottles over the past week were the Jakob Schneider Riesling Nahe Niederhäuser Klamm Eiswein 2020 (“finally, a great ice wine that reminds me of the best from the 1990s”), the Ökonomierat Rebholz Spätburgunder Pfalz Im Sonnenschein GG 2019 (“massive depth, but almost no feeling of weight at the stunning finish”) and the Riffel Riesling Rheinhessen Scharlachberg Trockenbeerenauslese 2019 (a “super-concentrated dessert wine" with “gigantic minerality”).

Check out his scores and notes, along with all the others, in the list below.

– James Durston, Senior Editor

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.