November Wines
Posted: 6th December 2022
The autumn tastings have ground to a halt. The wine trade looks to fill its coffers in the countdown to Christmas. Undoubtedly the brightest star in the firmament this November was the Union de Grand Crus, which includes many of the most famous names in Bordeaux. It was a chance to evaluate 2020, which was clearly a stellar vintage, although some growers are pointing at their 2018 as well. There were a lot of wines, and not just cru classes. I had a painful knee, so I concentrated on the classed growths. These wines were my favourites:
Graves: Bouscaut, Haut-Bailly and Carbonnieux. Top was Domaine de Chevalier: smoky, rich, concentrated but supple. The excellent Smith-Haut-Laffitte I had tasted elsewhere.
St Emilion: Dassault, Clos Fourtet, Larcis Ducasse. I had already tasted many. The best were Troplong-Mondot with its toasty, red fruits nose and wonderful structure, Valandraud was quite gorgeous on the palate, more black fruit than red, and Villemaurine – pastry rather than toast, rich in fruit, possibly a great. Pomerol: La Cabanne (in a lighter style) and La Conseillante. The best was a stupendous La Croix de Gay.
Listrac: Fourcas-Hosten; Haut-Médoc: Cantemerle. The top wine was La Lagune: cherries, well integrated, cooling tannins. Margaux: Desmirail (not sure I’ve ever had a good Desmirail before), Kirwan, du Tertre. The top was Marquis-de-Terme, announced by a beautiful colour, lovely all round, one of the greatest wines in the tasting. St Julien: Grauaud-Larose (had the 2005 at a friend’s recently, and was relieved to find it had not gone ‘big’ and Parkery), Léoville-Barton. Top: Beychevelle, an absolute classic with cedary nose and elegance, and Talbot: striking colour, toasty nose, impressive concentration (always a big wine). Pauillac: Batailley (horrid bottle) and Croizet-Bages. Best Grand-Puy-Ducasse, lovely nose, true Médocain elegance, Lynch-Bages, colour and concentration. St Estèphe: Lafon-Rochet.
Sauternes and Barsac: 2020 was not a great year for noble rot or botrytis, but Doisy-Daëne and Doisy-Védrines did well for all that. Sigalas Rabaud showed its 2015, which was the best Sauternes in the tasting.
There are wonderful Vouvrays from the Loire that are infected with noble rot too, and coupled with the pronounced acidity of the Chenin grape, they can be superb. Most Vouvray, however, is off dry, adding enough sweetness to cover Chenin’s occasional austerity. Demi-sec wines suit the food of the region with its pâtés and rillettes. Climate change, however, means increased ripeness, and that allows producers to make more and more dry wine. Take Sylvain Gaudron, who produces a bone-dry La Symphonie or even better, his Belle au naturel. Mouton Noir is new, 2021 is his first vintage, but the wines point to a ‘sparkling’ future. Domaine Paris has a sparkling wine which spends eight years on its lees, not to mention a sumptuous sweet ‘moelleux’ 2018, with 170 grams residual sugar reeking of peach and pineapple.
The most famous soils in Vouvray are chert: flint and limestone. Some of the best wines in the tasting came from the Domaine Brisebarre where the soils are predominantly clay, however, and the dry wine has a nutty, salty character. The best wine I tried was the complex 2017 Demi-Sec. Bourillon Dorléans makes lots of wines, including the sparkling cuvée Gaston Dorléans, which spends five years on its lees and has lovely aromas of ripe pears and peaches. The 2017 La Bourdonnerie Demi-Sec was nicely honeyed, and there was a proper sweet 2016 ‘moelleux’ La Levrière combining rich fruit and flintiness. This plays second fiddle to the 2016 La Coulée d’Or which was raisiny with hints of pears and pepper. The Domaine d’Orfeuilles Brut Atemporelle combines three vintages and was nicely balanced. Best of all was the 2020 Silex. There is good Demi-sec and a smoky 2020 moelleux called Réserve d’automne.
Another big tasting was Rioja. I used to enjoy my visits to Rioja, down to the last one about eighteen years ago. I spent a week in Haro on my own, passing the days with growers and entertaining myself in the evening. I bought my son his first pair of shoes there but the evenings took a bit of planning. I’d learn some Spanish, read a bit, visit a bar for a beer and watch the clock until 9.45 when I’d stroll down to the main square for dinner. Even when I lasted until ten I was still the first person in the restaurant. The menus were interchangeable: baby lambs, sometimes with a bit of black pudding to start; sometimes with potatoes, at others just bread and salad. The diet hasn’t changed much since Roman times.
Now I am stuck in the past, knowing only the famous estates, but fortunately I ran into Tim Atkin who gave me tips for the better modern producers. They were sometimes very new like Viña del Lentisco where although the vines were planted in 1930, they have only recently decided to bottle their wines themselves. The 2021 Selvanevada was excellent value at £13.30 but the real fireworks appeared with the suave 2017 Villota Selección and the 2019 Viña Gena Villota. From under the table appeared a gorgeous pure Graciano 2019 Villota.
Rioja is adapting to climate change by seeking higher vineyards and cooler expositions. Arzcuren Bodega y Viñedos makes some truly special wines like the opulent 2021 Monte Gatun, and the 2021 Solomazuelo Anfora (no guesses as to how it is aged) which grows in a north-west-facing vineyard at 600 metres. The grape variety is the rare Mazuelo, just as the 2020 Sologarnacha Anfora is pure Grenache. There is not much of the latter (under a hectare) but it is wonderful. The floral 2018 Solomazuelo is also lovely, like the 2019 Finca el Foro, a field blend made from a very small parcel of five cultivars grown in sand.
Bodegas 202 is another estate that has gone up in the world, with vines planted between 620 and 700 metres. The 2016 Aistear is pure, low yielding Tempranillo and a super wine. Macrobert & Canals was entirely new to me, It was one of the few houses (I have so many great memories of Lopez de Heredia’s Viña Tondonia) which makes a lovely white in its 2020 Laventura.
Another new tendency has been to look beyond the standard Tempranillo for new grapes. There was always masses of Garnacha in Rioja, but it was decried. Now people are more open about it. At Contino, for example, the 2019 is 100 percent Garnacha and all the better for it. This does not mean that Tempranillo is dead. The reds from Bodegas y Viñedos Pujanza are 100 percent Tempranillo and were some of the loveliest in the tasting. They ranged from the 2016 Pujanza Hado (£16) to the 2018 Cisma (£170). Cisma was upstaged in price by Bodegas Roda’s 2018 Cirsion at £195 – only 8,377 litres were bottled.
The Barón de Ley is widely distributed and good value for money. The pick of the crop was the 2017 Barón de Ley Reserva, a chunky, slightly old-fashioned Tempranillo-based Rioja (nothing wrong with that). The Bodegas Valdemar has also been looking at different grape varieties and single vineyards. The 2019 Balcón de Pilatos is 100% hundred-year old Maturana which tasted a bit like Cabernet Franc. There are 35 plots scattered over eight hectares.
Cosme Palacio is another respected house. The ‘1894’ (actually 2017) is of the new ‘Frenchy’ style and costs around £55 a bottle. Better, I thought, was the 2014 Glorioso with its mulberry tastes, which sells for around half that. Marqués de Riscal is one of the old houses created to provide wine for Bordeaux when it was devastated by Phylloxera in the late nineteenth century. They still produce great wine like the 2018 Reserva and the 2016 Gran Reserva made from 80-year old vines. CVNE is another venerable institution. The 2018 Reserva is even slightly gamy, a real classic, and a lot cheaper at c£16 than many of the new wines. Muga is another house which has been pleasing palates for generations. The top wine here is the 2018 Selección Especial, which will give you change from £30. It is still reticent, and might be better in a few years. Remelluri makes good wine under its Viñedos de San Vincente label – the 2018 – and has a really wonderful, slightly peppery 2014 Reserva.
Knee pain stopped me from going to Tim’s big Ribera del Duero tasting as well, but I had two very good ones at home: 2016 Aster and the 2018 Tinto Arzuaga Reserva. The Aster was a concentrated mass of black fruits and toast, but may be drunk with pleasure now; Arzuaga had amazing development, starting with pepper and liquorice and opening up to rich, creamy back fruits.
Tesco’s Finest 2018 Malbec is a good buy. It is quite a grown-up Malbec: creamy, peppery with a hint of almonds plus the usual black fruits and chocolate. For those who must have ‘claret’ with their Christmas dinner there is the 2018 Sirius which has good, serious grip and an authentic aroma of liquorice.
The fashion for Provencal rosé seems in no way to have abated. The best I’ve had recently was the 2021 Love Léoube: a pretty salmon pink with aromas of strawberries and lemons.
It’s that time of the year again when people are looking for good value alternatives to champagne. Most champagne is well above the £30 mark now. Own label wines are nudging £20, but Aldi has an excellent range that goes as low as £14. Cava is not to mistaken for champagne but is often good. The 2020 Vintage Cordoniu exudes mangoes, even mango skins, tangerines with a little bit of chocolate. The Reserve Cava from Roger Goulart is recommended for its fine bead, slight saltiness and pineapple taste.
The 2019 Château la Rame, Sainte Croix du Mont is a pudding wine from a satellite of Sauternes and will not be visited as often by ‘noble rot’ the fungus that gives it that characteristic ‘rôti’ taste. The wine is lighter than Sauternes but in a good year like this it can be lovely.
