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Brilliance in Santa Barbara
United States: California, featured
, Sep, 2023
Santa Barbara continues to impress with a wide range of exceptional, world-class wines. After the challenging but ultimately strong 2020 harvest, producers were welcomed with far more favorable conditions in 2021. It is a spectacular vintage for the whites, quite possibly the best I have seen in more than a dozen years of tasting these wines, but ultimately less consistent for the reds, as we will explore in this year’s report.
Chianti Classico: The Brilliant 2021s & Variable 2020s
Italy: Tuscany, featured
, Aug 2023
It’s a fabulous time for readers who love Chianti Classico. The wines have never been better, as evidenced by both the growing number of estates making gorgeous Chianti Classicos and the stylistic breadth those wines encompass. The 2021s in particular are some of the most exciting young wines I have tasted in more than 25 years of visiting the region.
Cellar Favorite: San Giusto a Rentennano Chianti Classico: 2001-1990
Verticals & Retrospectives, cellar favorite, Cellar Favorites, Italy: Tuscany
, Aug 2023
When was the last time a grower presented a vertical of their entry-level wine where the youngest vintage was more than twenty years old? Never, in my experience. That’s exactly what Luca Martini di Cigala did during my most recent visit to San Giusto a Rentennano. It was a remarkable tasting and a fitting continuation of themes I explored last year in my report on vintages 2002 through 2010.
Bruno Giacosa Dinner at Legacy Records
Verticals & Retrospectives, Italy: Piedmont, featured
, Aug 2023
This Bruno Giacosa retrospective and dinner, part of our ten-year anniversary celebration, was a great opportunity to go back and visit a wide range of benchmark wines from one of Piedmont’s most illustrious producers. To be honest, I had a hard time narrowing the selection down to a reasonable number of wines for a single evening. I chose to focus on vintages from Giacosa’s prime, wines that remain the reference points for the estate.
Sonoma’s Sensational 2021s
United States: California, featured
, Aug 2023
After a very challenging 2020, Sonoma bounces back big time with a fabulous vintage in 2021. Bold Pinots, savory Syrahs, vibrant Chardonnays and nuanced Zinfandels are all part of the mix. Two thousand twenty-one is the best Sonoma vintage since 2018. While that may not be saying all that much in terms of the time elapsed, the 2021s are both very high in quality and consistent across the board. It’s a vintage full of stunning, compelling wines.
Exploring New Releases from Coastal Tuscany
Italy: Tuscany, featured
, Aug 2023
Readers will find much to admire in new releases from the Tuscan Coast. Vintage 2020 is a bit uneven, but the best wines offer notable freshness and aromatic intensity, with less heft than is typical, not a bad thing for a region where wines can be a bit heavy. Based on what I have tasted so far, 2021 appears to be a much more even vintage endowed with all the classic signatures of textural richness that make the wines of Coastal Tuscany so distinctive. Although this report focuses on the coast, I include notes on a handful of other wines from other inland appellations that are too small to be covered on their own.
Bartolo Mascarello 1955 to…from Magnum
Verticals & Retrospectives, Italy: Piedmont, featured
, Jul 2023
When it came time to decide on the Rare Wine Dinner for La Festa del Barolo in 2023, the year of our tenth anniversary, there was only one choice. Bartolo Mascarello was the first grower I met in Piedmont. Mascarello spent several hours with me that afternoon in a wide-ranging discussion that touched on politics, culture and, eventually, wine. It was an important moment, a moment in which I began to understand that the wines I loved so much were deeply shaped by the people who crafted them.
Cellar Favorite: Seven for Seven – A Brief Tour of Napa Valley
cellar favorite, Cellar Favorites, United States: California
, Jul 2023
I was delighted to curate this small, intimate tasting for one of our private corporate clients. The objective was to taste representative wines from reference-point producers in top vintages across several appellations. I picked the first six wines, while our host added the seventh. As much as I enjoy tasting new releases in Napa Valley, sitting down and focusing on a smaller group of wines years after release is every bit as instructive. I would like to thank the team at the Press Club in San Francisco for handling all aspects of wine service with extreme care. It was a tremendous evening all around.
Vinous Table: Osteria Le Logge, Siena, Italy
Vinous Table, Italy: Tuscany
, Jun 2023
Tuscany can be challenging for dining because so many places cater to the tourist crowd, and few establishments take proper care of their wines. Readers visiting this corner of Tuscany absolutely owe themselves a visit to Osteria Le Logge. It’s the real deal.
Cellar Favorite: 2013 Screaming Eagle
cellar favorite, Cellar Favorites, United States: California, napa
, Jun 2023
The 2013 Screaming Eagle remains a very young wine. Dark, brooding and quite potent, the 2013 possesses tremendous depth backed by equally serious tannins.