Without Volnay, there is simply no joy,’ declared historian Claude Courtépée in his 18th-century work on the Duchy of Burgundy. The delights of the wine from this village have been known since before the dukes constructed their château there in the 11th century, while today’s wine lovers are discovering them again thanks to the able work of a new generation of winemakers.

While generational change is always occurring, it seems there are currently an unusually high number of fresh faces in Volnay, including the young winemakers Clément Boillot, Pierrick Bouley, Thomas Bouley, Marc-Olivier Buffet, Thibaud Clerget and Maxime Dubuet-Boillot.

To this, one should add Clothilde Lafarge, although her parents Frédéric and Chantal are still very much involved in the family domaine.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for wines from Volnay’s new generation

Wine selections and tasting notes by Charles Curtis MW:

Alcohol levels given where available

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Anthony Rose, Susan Hulme MW and Jason Millar tasted 109 wines, with 3 Outstanding and 41 Highly recommended.

Etna Rosso: Panel tasting scores

109 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 3

Highly recommended 41

Recommended 49

Commended 11

Fair 4

Poor 1

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their red wines classified as Etna DOC Rosso, Etna DOC Rosso Riserva or IGP Terre Siciliane, made using a minimum of 80% Nerello Mascalese or Nerello Cappuccio

In his Native Wine Grapes of Italy, Ian d’Agata writes: ‘Prior to 2000, nobody talked about Nerello Mascalese, or Nerello Cappuccio, its stablemate.’ Today, he says, things ‘couldn’t be more different, and the Etna area has become, without question, Italy’s single hottest wine production zone’.

Whether or not intended, there is a degree of irony in the word ‘hottest’ here, because – with all due respect to the reality of climate change – the huge Sicilian mountain attracting publicity this year for puffing volcanic vortex rings is distinctly colder and wetter than the rest of the island.

The Etna DOC was established in 1968, but it wasn’t until the ‘noughties’ that it saw the widespread adoption of indigenous grape varieties, most notably the light-coloured, late-ripening Nerello Mascalese.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores from the Etna Rosso panel tasting

Etna Rosso panel tasting scores

Wines were tasted blind

The judges

Anthony Rose is a widely published writer on wine and sake, including for The Oxford Companion. A DWWA Regional Chair, his latest book is Fizz! Champagne and Sparkling Wines of the World (Infinite Ideas, 2021).

Susan Hulme MW is a wine writer, editor, educator and presenter specialising in Italy. She runs her own wine training and consultancy company Vintuition and travels regularly to Italy’s wine regions. Now focusing more on her writing, she is Italian editor for The Wine Independent.

Jason Millar is a freelance wine writer, consultant, judge and communicator, with a focus on South Africa and Italy. He was formerly buyer and director at retailer Theatre of Wine, and in 2016 was the top WSET Diploma graduate worldwide.

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US-born Amber Mihna, global sales director for Napa’s Staglin Family Vineyard, met her British partner Phil Robertson, a senior executive at Amazon, in Mexico, in 2020. Since then, they’ve bought a property in the Cotswolds, planted a vineyard from scratch and will produce their first wines under the Fossebridge Vineyard label in 2025. All while holding down their demanding day jobs. They’re even finding time to grow vegetables, and keep bees.

Amber: ‘We met on the day that the news broke about the Covid situation in China, in February 2020. Phil was on holiday in Mexico, and I was there to host a Staglin wine dinner. I was supposed to be travelling on to Europe for the Prowein trade show and other meetings, but everyone started cancelling. Phil went back to Seattle, where he lived at the time; I flew back to my home in Napa. Because all my work travel plans had been cancelled, I drove up to see him and we toured Walla Walla. I started doing the 14-hour drive up there every other week for about six months. There was no traffic on the road, just Amazon and Walmart trucks. In early June, Phil had a visa issue and got sent back to the UK. The international border lockdown meant foreigners couldn’t fly into the US. But I was able to fly to the UK.’

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Phil: ‘Because I was in the process of moving, with all my stuff stuck in a container somewhere, I was legally allowed to stay in tourist accommodation. Amber would fly over and we toured around southern England: Somerset, the New Forest, the Cotswolds here in Gloucestershire. We wanted to find a house, and we had also both dreamed about owning a vineyard. Amber had even travelled to Piedmont and Tuscany looking for vineyards. While staying near here, we saw Fossebridge House advertised for sale in Cotswold Life magazine. We’d looked in Devon and Sussex also, but fell in love with this house, and the location in the Cotswolds, mainly as a place to live. Built in the 1950s, it hadn’t been decorated since the 1970s and was a complete wreck. But it wasn’t listed so we had the freedom to do the renovations we wanted to.’

Amber: ‘The house came with 3ha and we now have around half of it under vine. It was a massive clearance job – there were stinging nettles up to waist level, and we had to remove 100 tonnes of wood from the trees. You have to apply for change of use if the vineyard is 2ha or above, but ours was smaller so that wasn’t necessary. We carried out soil tests, mainly to make sure there was nothing toxic in the soils – all was fine. Then we did some soil samples. The soil is the commonly found Cotswold brash, a limestone soil with high stone content, with clay and sand, over rock. The vines are on a south-facing slope behind the house, so ideal orientation.’

Phil: ‘Through word of mouth, we came across a guy who had run Biddenden winery in Kent and has now set up a vineyard establishment business. He sourced the vines for us, from France and Germany, and planted them. We planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in 2021, and then in 2023 more Chardonnay, some Pinot Meunier and Sauvignon Blanc. The Sauvignon Blanc was a late addition, inspired by the success of nearby Woodchester Valley Vineyard with its award-winning SB. It helps to have a still wine, to generate a bit of revenue while your sparkling wines are ageing on lees. We’re also planning to make a Pinot Noir rosé. The sparkling line-up will comprise a non-vintage cuvée, a richer, nuttier blanc de blancs with more time on lees, and a 100% Pinot Meunier.’

Amber: ‘We decided not to plant PiWi (fungus-resistant) varieties. Lots of people round here have planted them and do well with them, and they undoubtedly cope better with frost and mildew. But for me, drinking wine means vitis vinifera. You don’t find much Chardonnay in Gloucestershire, as it’s harder to ripen. Most of the local wineries use Seyval Blanc or Solaris for their sparkling wines.’

Phil: ‘The only drawback to the location is that we’re quite high up here for the area, on the Cotswold escarpment, so we do experience frost. Lots of wineries use bougies (paraffin candles). But we’d need around 300, so the cost would be around £3,000 a night. Plus it only gives you 1.5˚ to 2˚C protection, so it doesn’t even work if the temperature falls too low. The other downside is that it’s manual – you have to physically go out and light them all. Not only does that take time – we have 6,000 vines, at 1m spacing – but also we both travel a lot for work, so we needed a remote solution. Amber is on the road around 200 days of the year. We looked at heated wires and infrared lights, but the running costs are very high. So we’ve installed a water-based system, which has high capital costs but lower running costs (about half the cost of lighting bougies over five years), and can be activated remotely. When it gets cold, sprayed water stops the bud from freezing – it’s slightly exothermic (heat creating) – and then encapsulates the bud in a cocoon of ice. You keep spraying so the pipes don’t freeze, and the temperature stays at 0˚C.’

Amber: ‘We also get lots of rain, so mildew is a challenge. Most people reckon you can harvest in your third year from planting, while some advise you wait an extra year. We didn’t have a choice as we hadn’t bought a sprayer last year and had mildew in the leaves and trunks – it rained virtually every day in July and August. We won’t harvest until 2025, but it gives the plants a better base to build from. We’re expecting seven or eight good harvests out of 10, given the marginal climate. It’s getting warmer, but achieving the sugar levels you need, even for sparkling, can be tough, especially when you factor in the altitude here (you lose 0.5˚C for every 50m).’

Phil: ‘It’s expensive starting a vineyard in the UK, and we don’t have investors – we’re bootstrapping it as much as we can. Brexit hasn’t helped in terms of the taxes we need to pay to get equipment purchased from abroad through customs. We get help when we need it, but we do most of the work ourselves, trying to incorporate organic practices wherever we can. We can prune the top vineyard in 20 hours. It’s a killer on the back though. We’re currently looking at winemaking options. In the long term we’d like our own winery here, but in the meantime we’ll use another winery or a contract winemaking firm.’

Amber: ‘Napa feels very different as a winemaking community, as it’s such a small area – 5 miles by 30 miles. And producers have learned to collaborate really well in the face of the recent natural disasters. In contrast, wineries here are spread across the whole of the south of the UK, even extending north to Yorkshire. It’s harder to have a community over that distance. That said, when we needed some more posts urgently we put a shout-out on the WineGB forum, and a winery in Cornwall let us have some they didn’t need, for free. That was a great feeling. The local community here is great too. Initially there was disbelief among the locals that we were planting vines, but now they’re excited. The day that we put the first vines in the ground we had a party, because we wanted everyone to know what was happening. That is paying off.’

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The Bordeaux 2010 vintage stands as a landmark year, one of the most celebrated in recent memory. Superb across the entire region, red wines reached optimum maturity with bright acidity and firm tannins.

Small berries produced concentrated wines with many having increased percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blends, leading to a slight advantage for the Left Bank over the Right.

Often talked about alongside the equally brilliant but contrasting-in-style 2009 vintage, 2010 offered less hedonism but more homogeneity with excellent red, dry white and sweet examples.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for our top 2010 Médoc reds

Hitting their stride: 40 top Médoc 2010 reds to seek out

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Herzegovina, the smaller, southern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has at least 2,000 years of viticultural history, but it has really blossomed during the last 20. More than 30 modern wineries dot this sun-drenched strip abutting Croatia. Alongside these contemporary vineyards, the majority of families in this region of roughly 350,000 inhabitants make their own wine. Only-try-here bottles of humble yet hearty ‘vina’ are sold on the roadside next to wild honey and pomegranates. Bordeaux it isn’t.

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Wine-tasting in Herzegovina – a resolutely welcoming experience, where wine is often paired with pršut (local prosciutto) – revolves around two indigenous grapes. Blatina is a madcap red that erupts in the glass like a plum volcano. Yet it’s tricky to grow even here. Its flowers are auto-sterile, meaning they can’t fertilise themselves and the vines must be planted with another variety, though this still doesn’t guarantee fruit production, hence the variety’s nickname: ‘empty barrel’. The Austro-Hungarian emperors, who ruled Herzegovina from 1878 until World War I, preferred the zingy, mineral-rich white Žilavka. In the words of one of Herzegovina’s hottest young winemakers, Milena Anđelić: ‘Our guests didn’t fly thousands of miles to try Cab Sauv.’

Opened in 2007 and upgraded and re-launched in 2023, the Herzegovina Wine Route, which starts in the pretty regional capital of Mostar, reveals this burgeoning wine region to a wider audience. This year, 300 wine-friendly hotels, restaurants and experiences are expected to join the 30-odd wineries on an interactive route map, alongside canoeing, bike trails and historic towns in the hilly hinterland. Best of all, the route unites wine lovers of all faiths in a region once riven by difference. Visit now and you’ll be among the first to sip the latest generation of one-off wines.

Looking over Svitavsko lake on the Ćiro bike trail

Striking out from Mostar

Andrija Ćorić is vice president of the Herzegovina Wine Route. His great-grandfather Šimun soldiered for 12 years for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was repaid with some sloping, stony land in the village of Paoča near Čitluk. Here the Andrija vineyard, named after Šimun’s son, was established, a 30-minute rollercoaster drive southwest from Mostar. In 2019, the historic winery was modernised, and it’s now a viticultural playground with a wine library, stroll-through cellars, tasting rooms, boutique guestrooms and a gourmet restaurant. ‘God gave us stones, sunshine and two grapes you won’t find anywhere else,’ says Ćorić.

During the socialist era, when families in the former Yugoslavia were limited to making 100 litres of wine a year for personal consumption, Andrija was given special dispensation to produce creamy Žilavka whites, with the honeysuckle subtlety of a wildflower meadow, for national leader Josip Tito. When war came to the Balkans in the 1990s, the Ćorić family didn’t miss a single vintage, despite a bomb falling on its vineyard. Wine and food tastings (€10-€40), conducted by generous hosts Andrija, his sister Katarina and loquacious patriarch Miro, are superb. Their Blatina Andrija Selection revs like a Formula 1 car then finishes like a slow cruise through an orchard of cherries.

Also southwest of Mostar is biodynamic pioneer Brkić. This bucolic vineyard produces a landmark organic Žilavka. Like most wineries in Herzegovina, a call or WhatsApp a few days in advance will allow host Josip and his three young sons to prepare a wine tasting with some homemade bread, pršut and two types of cheese (€25 per person), or arrange a local driver or activities. Visitors are welcome to help with the September harvests. Other wine-related activities and tours in Herzegovina are generally open from Easter until October.

The waterfall of Kravica. Credit: Federica Gentile / Getty Images

Towards Trebnije

The city of Trebinje is situated on the banks of the Trebišnjica river. Credit: CCR_358 / Getty Images

The Herzegovina Wine Route is criss-crossed by a unique cycling trail. Until 1976, a steam train, first operated by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, chuffed its way from Mostar, through the countryside and eventually to Dubrovnik. Today the Ćiro (as the train line was known) has been remade as a pastoral bike trail dotted with rural hotels serving burek pastries and trout plucked from the river. The 142km section that roughly follows the wine route runs from Mostar all the way to Trebinje, Herzegovina’s other major winemaking area. If driving, Mostar and Trebinje are two hours apart.

Trebinje is a majority ethnic Serb area of Herzegovina. It’s home to the visitor-friendly Tvrdoš monastery, where a religious order has made a flinty Žilavka since the 15th century. The head cellarman, behind such Decanter award-winning wines as the Velika Rezerva 2016 (DWWA Bronze in 2018), is a monk. Try the juxtaposition of tasting in the medieval cellar then making your way upstairs and gazing up at the adjoining monastery’s frescoed dome, a religious vision in cobalt and gold.

In Trebinje, a 10-minute drive from the monastery, one of the largest and most impressive wine operations in the area was created in a single generation by Radovan Vukoje. In 2000, aged 20, Vukoje harvested his first grapes at winery Vukoje 1982 while studying oenology in Belgrade. His wines can be tasted in the seven-storey cellar, fermentation room, restaurant and rooftop bar, which overlooks Trebinje. A favourite is the 2018 pure Vranac. Made with big, black liquorice-tang Vranac grapes, this wine tastes large and lasts long – imagine a Balkan amarone.

Vukoje’s latest project delivers history in a glass. In 2023, he purchased the last of 11 parcels of land that once made up the personal vineyard of Emperor Franz Joseph (who died in 1916). He now escorts guests there for summertime tastings, a 10-minute drive from Trebinje through fig orchards. Vukoje’s Carsko Vino – ‘csar’s wine’ – is predominantly Žilavka and as unctuous as a peach smoothie. ‘Now they drink it in Vienna again,’ smiles Vukoje.

On the road back to Trebinje, an absolute must-visit is Vinarija Anđelić. Run by mother-and-daughter team Milica and Milena, the winery is sited inside a rock cavern that the family hollowed out using construction dynamite in 2004. (Milena, now 24, used to rock climb around the cellar walls.) At their new tasting room (due to open in 2024), try the signature Žilavka, as fragrant and moreish as Turkish delight. Multilingual Milena also conducts al fresco tastings accompanied by local cheese and ham (€35-€40, bookings essential) in her family vineyards during summer.

Back near Mostar, Carski vineyard, so called because it supplied wines to Vienna’s Habsburg ‘csars’, and its adjoining Emporia Hotel is the ultimate wine address. It has a top chef and a slick tasting experience for a fraction of the price of France or Italy. Carski produces about 125,000 bottles of wine per year, which is large by local standards – Herzegovina’s entire production could be trumped by a single big Italian winery. And what wines they are, made by Josip Martinović, one of the region’s top oenologists, who also manages Herzegovina’s biggest online wine store, Hedonism, which stocks 2,000 lines of wine. Carski’s full-blooded Blatina, costing €7 at the vineyard, is like being fed wild strawberries by Habsburg Empress Sisi, who features on the label. It’s a taste of things to come.

Your Herzegovina address book

Accommodation

The Emporia Hotel at Carski vineyard

Hotel Emporia, near Mostar
Herzegovina’s ultimate wine address has a pool, funky rooms, gourmet restaurant and rows of Tuscan-style cypress trees.

Hotel Verso, Mostar
A hip new bargain, 10 minutes’ walk from the Ottoman bridge, with 10 contemporary rooms and a restaurant area that doubles as Mostar’s ladies-who-lunch address. A glass of wine costs €2.50; double rooms including breakfast from €69.

Kriva Cuprija, Mostar
A heritage hotel overlooking Mostar’s old town and Ottoman bridge. Local wines are served on the panoramic terrace. Double rooms including breakfast from €97.

Food & drink

Restaurant Šadrvan

Andrija winery, Čitluk
There is no menu at the new restaurant of Herzegovina’s most welcoming winery. Text or call in advance for a belly-busting platter of pork goulash and slow-cooked lamb. Pair with Travarica firewater, made using 28 herbs and distilled by owner-host Miro, then sleep it off in a wine-themed guest room upstairs.

Restaurant Šadrvan, Mostar
@restoran.sadrvan
A highly commended vintage charmer overlooking Mostar’s famous bridge. Šadrvan’s cuisine is a Balkan delight of ćevapi minced lamb fingers with hot pepper sauce, paired with the best baklava desserts this side of Istanbul. Follow with Bosnian coffee.

Romanca, near Mostar
A 10-minute drive south of Mostar, Romanca sits in its own vast vineyard. It offers cellar tours and tastings, and you can enjoy stuffed lamb and wine-steeped beef in the adjoining restaurant.

Things to do

Blagaj monastery, built by the whirling dervishes 500 years ago. Credit: Elena Duvernay / Getty Images

Blagaj monastery, near Mostar
A 25-minute taxi ride from Mostar, this astonishingly picturesque monastery was built by Sufi Islamic ‘whirling dervishes’ five centuries ago. The mystical location – where the Buna river oozes out from an eerie cave – adds to the peaceful allure.

Kayaking on Neretva river, Jablanica
A 40-minute drive from Mostar, outdoor-adventure specialists Visit Jablanica operate kayak glamping trips, hiking tours and, for €20, regular canoe rental on the translucent blue Neretva river.

Via Vino, Mostar
This wine store, tasting room and regional travel agency on Mostar’s bustling Feljića boulevard offers a €75 Herzegovina Wine Route tour that stops at three rural wineries, including Brkić.

How to get there

Credit: Maggie Nelson

Mostar is about two hours’ drive from three airports: Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Split, the latter two in neighbouring Croatia. From Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital city, a telegenic train (also two hours) runs alongside the Neretva river directly to Mostar.

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The food in my new book Michel Roux at Home is the food I eat with my family, particularly at my house in France. My family is from the north of France and Burgundy, where the cooking is rich in butter and cream, but these days I find myself gravitating to the food of the south, featuring olive oil and fresh fruit and vegetables. My home is in the south, in Ardèche, and that’s my style of cooking now.

Some people still see French food as fine dining, haute cuisine, but I want to show that French home cooking is very different from that and doesn’t have to be complicated. Like Italian cooking, it’s all about using good seasonal ingredients and letting them shine by not messing around with them too much. And that’s exactly what I do at home – I’m not into fuss or fancy frills.

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Spiced lamb shoulder with couscous

The inspiration for this dish comes from North African cooking and I use spices normally associated with tagines. The lamb does have to be marinated for up to two days and needs long, slow cooking, but you are rewarded with flavourful meat that’s falling off the bone. Perfect with the couscous and chickpeas.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 lemon, quartered, pips removed
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 lamb shoulder
• 2 red onions, cut into wedges
• 1 litre pomegranate juice
• 200ml lamb or chicken stock
• 150g couscous
• 400g tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 100g tub of pomegranate seeds, or seeds from 1 fresh pomegranate
• Small handful of mint leaves, chopped
• 100ml olive oil
• 2 tbsp clear honey
• 50ml lemon juice

Garnish: Extra pomegranate seeds and mint leaves

Method

1. Put the garlic, cinnamon, cumin, oregano and lemon quarters in a blender with the salt and black pepper, then blend until smooth. Put the lamb shoulder in a large roasting tin and tip the marinade over the top. Massage the marinade all over the lamb and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours or up to 2 days.
2. Remove the lamb from the fridge about an hour before cooking. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Scatter the onion wedges around the lamb, tucking some underneath, then pour
over the pomegranate juice and the stock. Cover the lamb with a piece of baking paper, then some foil and cook for 4 hours until the meat is nice and tender. Remove the lamb
from the oven and set it aside to rest. Reserve the cooking juices.
3. Put the couscous and chickpeas in a mixing bowl and add 300ml of the lamb cooking juices. Leave to stand until the couscous has absorbed all of the liquid, then break it up with a fork. Add the pomegranate seeds and mint leaves, and stir in the olive oil.
4. Drizzle the honey and lemon juice over the lamb, garnish with pomegranate seeds and mint leaves, and serve with the couscous and chickpeas.

Michel Roux at Home was published in August 2023 (£26 Seven Dials)

Michel Roux Jr is one of the world’s most respected chefs. Le Gavroche, which he ran from 1991 until it closed earlier this year, received recommendations for excellence in every food guide. His latest TV series Michel Roux’s Provence Masterclass first aired in March 2023 and is available to stream on Discovery+.

The wines to drink with spiced lamb shoulder with couscous

By Fiona Beckett

Even though the lamb is spiced, this is still a versatile dish to pair with wine. Normally I’d recommend a southern French Grenache-Syrah blend, but there are a couple of ingredients – the pomegranate juice and the honey – that will make the dish sweeter than you might imagine given the North African spicing, so I’d be tempted to look beyond that. Grenache on its own, particularly young Grenache, has a sweetness that should chime in nicely – there are great examples from Rioja and Navarra these days and, further afield, from South Africa and South Australia. Graciano-based Rioja with its exotic sweet edge should also work. I’m not sure this is a white wine dish, though you could try a Viognier or a Rhône-style Viognier blend – but I’m tempted by the idea of a dark rosé. Tavel would be the obvious candidate, but a Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo from Italy would be a fun summer choice. Or a big, ripe rosé from South Australia (thinking of Charles Melton’s fabulous Rose of Virginia).

Wines selected by our Decanter experts

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The best Rioja wines are designed to be aged, first in barrel and then in bottle, for many years. Some of these wines, produced in exceptional vintages, develop great complexity over decades and stay in pristine shape even after a century or more. Such acclaimed vintages from the 20th century include 1948, 1952, 1955, 1964, 1982, 1994 and 1995.

The 21st century began with one of the greatest vintages ever, 2001, and since then it has produced other top vintages such as 2004, 2005, 2010 and 2012. Among the most recent vintages, 2021 and, most of all, 2019, are presented as great, but we’ll need to wait a couple more years to see if that promise becomes a reality.

The vintage guide below should be considered as a general guide. The region is large and diverse, and some producers will perform very well in lesser vintages.

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It’s a bit like one of those bad dreams. There you are, with a line-up of glasses half full of red wine laid out in front of you. You know that you are going to be asked to identify the origins of those wines. No one will give you the slightest clue. And you’ve only got a few minutes per wine to do the job.

Nightmarish as this sounds, the scenario will be familiar to anyone who’s ever sat a blind-tasting wine exam. But let’s make the task a little bit easier, shall we? Let’s assume that you’re told that the wines all come from within the Bordeaux region.

Even then, trying to pin down the source of each of them is no easy task. Nevertheless, every glass of wine contains clues – the question is, what’s the best way of making these clues add up to a strong conclusion?

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The 160km drive from Barcelona to the French border via Girona takes little more than 90 minutes. Driving up the efficient and clinical motorway, you’d never know you were passing through one of the most rugged, individual and below-the-radar wine regions in Spain: Empordà.

Empordà’s history, kinship, language and terroir are shared with Roussillon in southern France as much as they are with Spain. The cold Tramontana wind blows from France south across the border into Empordà – so strongly at times that anyone behaving strangely is said to be ‘tocat per la Tramontana’ (‘touched by the Tramontana’).

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 18 exciting wines from Empordà

See notes and scores for 18 exciting wines from Empordà to seek out

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What we have in mind when we talk about ‘fine wine’ is European – bottles of French, maybe Italian, maybe Spanish origin. Even in the US, a country not lacking in ego, European wines have long been hailed as the hallmark of quality.

‘Wine has never been embedded in the American lifestyle the way it is for so many Europeans. It’s a luxury product, not an art form tethered to day-to-day life,’ says Axel Borg, the distinguished librarian emeritus for food and wine at the UC Davis Library (a title just as hard-won and venerable as it sounds).

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It goes without saying, however, that American wine arrived on the scene at a bit of a temporal disadvantage. European winemakers began to cultivate vines and generational traditions long before we’d even entered the arena, but in addition to the timing deficit we also have Prohibition to blame – essentially an involuntary reset button for much of the US wine industry.

‘Wine has always had cultural cachet, cultural value, cultural capital,’ says Borg. ‘And after Prohibition, the state of domestic wine was so abysmal that it had the opposite effect.’

A fleet of trucks outside the California Wine Tonic Co premises in Los Angeles, 1931. Credit: Dick Whittington Studio / USC Libraries / Corbis via Getty Images

Lasting damage

Say what you will about Prohibition – call it destructive, misguided, generally disastrous – its impact on the American wine industry was catastrophic. And, with regard to the reputation of domestic wine in particular, it’s entirely possible that we’ve yet to undo that damage.

‘By the 1880s, it was no longer disputed that California had the potential to produce great wine. And by the start of Prohibition in 1920, there were hundreds of wineries – 719, to be specific – in operation,’ says Vanessa Conlin MW, global head of wine at Sotheby’s.

‘Then, with the start of the Volstead Act, aka Prohibition, quantity became more important than quality to grape buyers. Prohibition all but killed the wine industry in a number of major production states.’

When the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1919, prohibiting the sale of ‘intoxicating liquors’, Californian wine had been on a rather shiny trajectory. By the time the Volstead Act (formally the National Prohibition Act), which executed the amendment, came into effect the following year, local winemakers had well over 600,000hl of wine ready to go (1919 had, ironically, yielded quite an impressive harvest). Tragically, however, they had no way to sell it… not legally, anyway.

A group of men dump wine from barrels into a drain in Chicago in 1921 during Prohibition. Credit: Chicago Sun Times / Chicago Daily News Collection / Chicago History Museum / Getty Images

‘My great grandfather came over here in the 1870s, and he was a true pioneer in terms of growing grapes,’ says Darek Trowbridge, owner and head winemaker at Old World Winery, a low-intervention wine producer based in Sonoma County. ‘And when Prohibition came about, he came home one day to find that government officials had padlocked his barn shut. It seemed like he’d simply lost access to his property and his equipment – his livelihood.’

Fortunately, there were loopholes available to those crafty enough to risk dispensing their goods illegally (wine dealing, if you will). ‘The Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, but not its consumption – which left room for “home winemaking”, as well as wine that could be made and sold for sacramental purposes, or prescribed by medical professionals,’ says Borg. And as he explains it, plenty of archival data regarding wine prescriptions lives on (Paul Masson Mountain Winery in Saratoga, near San Francisco, for example, was specifically permitted to continue producing ‘medicinal champagne’ – the medical merit of which surely still holds up).

Sizeable quantities of grapes were still being shipped across the country, thanks to the ‘home winemaking’ loophole. But needless to say, fine, commendable wines were not the goal. Instead, merely potable alcohol would do – and in turn, vineyards grubbed up their higher-quality grapevines and replaced them with varieties whose fruit was sturdier and capable of surviving shipping without visible damage.

Consequently, when repeal took place in 1933, wineries were hardly equipped to bounce back. In fact, to meet the post-Prohibition demand for California wine, local producers began to turn out deeply flawed wine using sub-par grapes and tainted or antiquated equipment. ‘It’s fair to say that the wine was, well, appalling,’ says Kathleen Burk, professor emerita of modern and contemporary history at University College London. According to her research, in the year following repeal the number of operational wineries surged, only to plummet again to just a couple of hundred within four years. Which was to say, California’s prodigal return to the wine world was tepid at best – humiliating at worst.

A tractor from the New York-based National Liberal Alliance, which campaigned to modify the Volstead Act to allow people to drink ‘light wines and beer’, gathering petitions in Washington DC in April 1926. Credit: George Rinhart / Corbis via Getty Images

A new normal

There was, however, a silver lining. ‘It was only after repeal that folks in California – UC Davis in particular – decided to allocate resources towards rebuilding the local wine industry to its former glory – maybe beyond its former glory,’ says Borg.

After it was established in 1935, the current Department of Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis focused on combining the more scientific tenets of viticulture with the more sensory elements of oenology. According to Borg, the department was deeply invested in exploring the relationship between regional grapes and climate, as well as analysing local grape varieties to determine which were worth using. He cites an extensive study by professors Amerine & Winkler, published in the Hilgardia journal in 1944, for which they produced thousands of wines from grapes grown all over California, eventually concluding that the majority of the varieties in question were not viable for commercial
winemaking. ‘Whether they’ll admit it or not, many of those scientific findings are also likely used by European winemakers today,’ he says.

By the late 1930s, another stakeholder had come into play: the media. And at the forefront of wine publishing was a writer by the name of Julian Street. ‘Not only was Street a major wine educator at the time, but throughout his work, you could find his plea for the American public to take wine seriously when most were solely drinking beer and spirits,’ says Audrey Russek, food and wine archivist at UC Davis Library.

As she puts it, Street’s work was centred on the notion that many European countries had grown to consider wine as a quotidian pleasure, practical as much as aesthetic – while in the US, it never occupied such a role. Instead, it was decadence manifest, hardly meant to be incorporated quietly into the machinations of day-to-day life.

‘When we talk about alcohol consumption for early colonists, it’s about “taking the edge off”. It’s medicinal or it’s numbing,’ says Russek. ‘We became a spirits country because drinking was always a means to an end.’

A corner turned

Credit: Susanna Blavarg

By the 1960s, California wine had begun to grow legs again (forgive the pun). ‘In the 1940s and ’50s, sweet wine, often fortified, outsold dry wine three to one, and Americans were drinking mediocre, sweet wine rather than dry,’ Russek says. ‘But by the 1960s, as the wine continued improving, the regional palate skewed back towards drier and more balanced wines.’

In terms of PR, few events boosted the American wine ego quite like the Judgement of Paris tasting, the highest-drama occasion in the US wine world since, well, the ratification of Prohibition. ‘When Chateau Montelena won the Judgement of Paris in 1976, we’d only been rebuilding under that name for a few years – it was our 1973 vintage,’ says Matt Crafton, the current head winemaker at Chateau Montelena. ‘We were still finding our own feet – but that gave us so much optimism.’

In any case, despite Chateau Montelena’s very public victory, as well as the continued evolution of the wine media, we’ve yet to fold American wine into our conception of patriotism; it remains excluded from our national identity (which is to say, we’re far from adopting the whole ‘practical over aesthetic’ philosophy as regards wine consumption). Then again, perhaps the problem here is not one of comparisons.

‘Sure, Europe has generations of winemaking knowledge to draw from, but an advantage to being a relatively young industry – and I say “young” with scare quotes – is that there’s no template,’ adds Crafton. ‘We have a tremendous amount of creative freedom. It’s the ultimate meritocracy: winemakers are made, not necessarily born.’ And for what it’s worth, in a nation that prides itself on a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ ethos – the American Dream – it’s only natural that we would build a wine industry that subsists on the same principles.

It’s far from controversial to suggest that American wine is not and never will be European wine – no matter how many Burgundy producers schlep to Oregon to celebrate the terroir. But in a country where the wine industry has reincarnated itself in less than 100 years, there’s ample proof of the restored, even improved, quality of local winemaking (and it’s a distinctively American endeavour to build an industry up from scratch).

‘At this point, our obsession with French wine surely has more to do with European wine culture than it does with the wines themselves,’ posits Borg. ‘So if we’re discussing the reputation of American wines, it would seem that the culture must change, not the wines.’

For winemakers, that change is more an imperative than a suggestion. ‘American wineries are struggling right now. We have a huge amount of inventory and a huge decrease in sales,’ Patrick Cappiello of California’s Monte Rio Cellars said in a viral Instagram plea in February. ‘We are asking you for one thing, and one thing only: buy our wines–drink our wines.’

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The post Wine in the US: A fraught evolution appeared first on Decanter.

Inside the June 2024 issue of Decanter magazine:

FEATURES

• Red wines to chill: 30 great buys Tina Gellie introduces an eclectic selection of summer-drinking reds that shine when served cool
• Chile’s new wave whites Julie Sheppard urges wine lovers to discover the exciting and eclectic, often cool-climate whites of Chile, including some fascinating blends
• Bordeaux 2023 en primeur preview Georgie Hindle shares her expert view on the new-release vintage, with more to follow next month
• Producer profile: Sam Neill & Two Paddocks On a visit to the famous actor’s Central Otago estate, Susy Atkins learns about his love affair with Pinot Noir
• Volnay’s new generation Charles Curtis MW notices an unusually high number of fresh faces here
• Vernaccia di San Gimignano, to drink & to keep This Tuscan white wine enclave offers a range of styles, says Alessandra Piubello

LEARNING

• Wine wisdom Expert tips to help you on your journey through wine

SPIRITS

• Distilled Spirits, cocktails – plus five rums ideal for cocktails
• Seaside spirit Laura Foster on the rise of gins made using coastal botanicals, along with six to try

GOOD LIVING

• Perfect pairing: Spiced lamb shoulder with couscous Michel Roux’s delicious slow-cooked lamb is surprisingly versatile, wine-wise
• Travel: Sussex wine tour Amy Wislocki suggests a five-day itinerary exploring the vineyards

BUYING GUIDE

• Editors’ picks Tasting highlights
• Panel tasting: Bandol Elizabeth Gabay MW introduces a varied selection of red, white and rosé
• Panel tasting: Etna Rosso The indigenous reds were a hit with our panel, says Anthony Rose
• Expert’s choice: Empordà Fintan Kerr picks 18 top-quality buys
• Weekday wines 25 top wines under £20, chosen by the Decanter team
• Weekend wines Priced £20-£50, seven standout buys to impress

COLLECTORS

• Marketwatch investment news Auction updates; Champagne

REGULARS

• Meet the experts Decanter’s authors 8 Uncorked News, views & more
• Andrew Jefford’s column Could it be that different wine styles affect us in different ways?
• Guest column Matt Walls on what constitutes quality in wine
• DWWA 2023 picks Island wines
• Wine to 5: Ella Lister Strategic consultant & wine media CEO

Inside Decanter’s Bordeaux supplement:

Credit: Decanter / Main image: Tomas Marek / Shutterstock

• Welcome to Bordeaux Introduction by Georgie Hindle
• Meet the experts Decanter’s authors
• Guest column: Elin McCoy Vertical tastings provide an unparalleled insight into a wine
• Guest column: Charlie Geoghegan I’m not supposed to love Bordeaux, but I really do
• Bordeaux Uncorked What’s new in the region, with Georgie Hindle
• How to blind taste Bordeaux Natasha Hughes MW shares invaluable insider secrets on how to decode claret when tasted blind
• Renewal, renovation, innovation Elin McCoy picks five châteaux that have hugely upped their game
• Médoc Grand Cru Classé 2010 Georgie Hindle tastes and rates 40 wines from an excellent vintage that is really hitting its stride
• Médoc whites Panos Kakaviatos on the whites of the region, and the proposed Médoc Blanc appellation
• Château La Mission Haut-Brion Andy Howard MW visits a château that is often placed on the level of an unofficial first growth
• 2014 revisited: 10 years on Georgie Hindle assesses the evolution of the best ‘off vintage’ since 2004
• The 1960s & 1970s vintages Some wines from the best of these mature vintages are still drinking beautifully, says Gareth Birchley
• The Crus Bourgeois: 20 top buys Andy Howard MW blind tastes a selection of UK-available wines to find go-to wines in this value tier
• 10 reasons to discover the Entre-deux-Mers Escape the crowds on Bordeaux’s roads most travelled, and visit this lesser-known but dynamic region, says Wendy Narby
• Travel: St-Emilon: A wine lover’s guide Bordeaux-based Ira Szmuk shares her tips on where to visit, stay and eat in the popular town
• Panel tasting: Pessac-Léognan & Graves 2018 Our experts assessed 66 reds, finding stylistic variation between Pessac and Graves
• Expert’s choice: Fronsac & Canon-Fronsac Lin Liu MW picks 18 favourites from these value Right Bank twin areas
• Vintage guide To drink or keep?

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Rocco R Lombardo is president of major US wine importing and marketing company Wilson Daniels. Since his appointment in June 2015, Lombardo has added several world-renowned family-owned vineyards to the company’s portfolio (including Domaine Faiveley, Gaja, Familia Torres and Commanderie de Peyrassol). Today, Wilson Daniels is recognised as a front-runner in the US fine wine industry.

What led you to a career in fine wine?

My family. Being a first-generation Italian American, wine is an important part of my culture and was always on the table at home. Both my uncles were wine importers, and I was recruited into the business by one of them.

What has been your greatest moment, professionally?

The resurrection of Wilson Daniels to its previous heights when it was under the leadership of the founders, Win Wilson and Jack Daniels. When I took on the leadership of Wilson Daniels in 2015, the company had been in decline for about 15 years. In the nine years since, we have increased the employee base and our revenues five-fold.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Without a doubt, Covid-19. We represent some of the world’s finest wine producers, and 60% of our sales are in restaurants. The shelter-in-place orders that took hold in the second quarter of 2020 were very difficult for our business model. We decided at that time not to reduce headcount or furlough our employees. We opted instead to strengthen our presence in the market through outreach, such as virtual meetings and sample mailings. Where many companies took a step back, we took a step forward, and that’s something I’m very proud of.

What’s the most common misconception about your job?

Mainly, preconceptions about the romantic elements of wine. When you tell people you’re in the fine wine business, they imagine you drinking classic bottles at extravagant dinners with friends and colleagues. While that is an aspect of what we do, it’s a small aspect – at the end of the day, we’re running a business. The energies and strategies that are essential for running a wine business are no different to those of any other successful commercial endeavour.

What pressures come with importing some of the wine world’s biggest names?

Fulfilling high expectations. These are wine labels with long, important histories and celebrated reputations. They need to have very high standards, or they wouldn’t be where they are today. I would like to think that at Wilson Daniels, we have similarly high standards that meet their expectations.

And the perks?

The biggest perk without a doubt is getting to work with such amazing and historically important families. Knowing their wines intimately, visiting them at their estates and tasting the new vintages year after year is something only a select few are privileged to experience.

What keeps you up at night?

A sense of responsibility to our team. If anything causes some restlessness, it’s the need to continue to secure a successful path for this company and all of the people we employ.

Which US regions currently excite you?

Oregon’s Willamette Valley, for sure. Its northern position and proximity to the Pacific allow for great tension, expression and elegance in the Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. I’m also excited by the higher-elevation Napa vineyards, like those in the Diamond Mountain District AVA, which is home to the Davies family and the historic Schramsberg estate.

What’s your go-to pizza wine?

My family’s roots are in Sicily, so I often find myself reaching for Feudo Montoni’s Lagnusa, which is a vibrant, elegant expression of Nero d’Avola, produced at high altitude.

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The post Wine to 5: Rocco Lombardo, wine importer and distributor appeared first on Decanter.

By the time you read this, summer (or at least late spring) will hopefully have arrived in your corner of the northern hemisphere. And every year – along with gardener’s tans, finding your flip flops and wishing that you’d cleaned the barbecue the last time you used it – the warmer weather brings questions about chilling wine.

Scroll down to see our selection of 30 red wines to chill

Friends often ask sheepishly whether it’s acceptable to put ice cubes in their glass of white or rosé. Sure, I reply. If the wine was served too warm, it’s much better to dilute it slightly and drink it at the optimal crisp temperature than to persist with a flabby, unbalanced drink.

Keep your cool

No one ever asks about putting the red on ice, though. Because you simply don’t do that, do you? Red wines, as everyone knows, are supposed to be served at room temperature.

But 30°C in the shade is clearly not room temperature, and even though most of our homes are an ambient 18°C-20°C, that’s really not the ‘room temperature’ rooms used to be when the expression was first coined.

The optimal drinking temperature for most medium-to-heavy reds is about 16°C, so your barbecue-friendly bottles of Shiraz, Malbec and the like shouldn’t be sitting in the sun while you are cooking the sausages – they should be in the fridge, cooler or ice bucket. Like whites, reds served too warm lose their definition and become soupy, with the alcohol more noticeable.

A good rule of thumb is to take your white wines out of the fridge (or whatever cooling system you are using) 20 to 30 minutes before serving, and to chill reds down for 20 to 30 minutes before serving.

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Made to chill

When it comes to lighter reds, there are plenty of grape varieties that you can treat more like whites when it comes to chilling, serving them at 12°C-14 ̊C – maybe even 10°C in the heat of summer for the lightest styles. It all comes down to the wine’s structure.

Lighter-bodied reds with no or minimal barrel ageing are the best styles to go for, as cooler temperatures can accentuate oak characters and make tannins more astringent. As with rosés, paler-hued reds have probably been produced using less extraction and therefore will have lower levels of tannin.

Those red varieties grown at higher altitudes and from cooler climates should also have more lifted aromas and higher natural acidity, which is enhanced by chilling. And to maximise that quenchable, refreshing mouthful, opt for youthful, fruit-forward wine styles. Beaujolais, from the Gamay grape, is probably the wine the majority of people think of when it comes to reds that can be chilled. But most wines that have undergone carbonic maceration will fit the bill, as this style of winemaking (using intact bunches, with fermentation commencing in a sealed container in the absence of oxygen) enhances fruit-forward aromas and flavours, and keeps tannins soft and acids fresh.

Pinot Noir, too – particularly riper, more aromatic styles with less oak influence (so possibly not your grand cru Burgundy) – is a great choice to serve cellar-cool. The world is your oyster here, from North to South America and Australasia to the UK – and of course red Sancerre (aka Pinot Noir).

From top to toe, Italy is a haven for cool red varieties and styles: Lagrein and Valpolicella in the north, Frappato and Nerello Mascalese in the south and even Dolcetto and lighter Nebbiolos from Piedmont. Not forgetting Emilia Romagna’s Lambrusco: delicious served cool and paired with antipasto or light pasta dishes.

The red-fruited generosity of Grenache and Cinsault make them prime contenders to chill, not to mention lighter styles of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

If you’re keen to explore less-common varieties, try Chilean País, Trousseau and Poulsard from the Jura, Greek Xinomavro, Mandilaria and Liatiko, or Austrian Zweigelt.

Whichever grape variety or wine style you choose, just make sure you don’t overchill your red – or worse, forget about it in the freezer. Alternatively, instead of putting your wine in the fridge, cooler or ice bucket, there are plenty of sleeves and icicle-style gadgets that will chill your bottle down for you on the table.

And if there’s no other option, just drop a few ice cubes in your glass.

Red wines to chill: Our selection of 30 top picks

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The post Cool customers: The top red wines to chill appeared first on Decanter.

Ron Acierto is wine & beverage director at the Tributary Hotel’s ōkta restaurant in McMinnville, Oregon. He is an Imbibe 75 Person to Watch for 2024, as voted by Imbibe magazine in the US.

I have long had an affinity for this lovely wine. In my native Philippines, the national beverage is beer. Growing up, I never dreamed that wine would be part of my career path. Most Filipino households never even had bottles of liquor or beer at home, and drinking alcohol was something you did only on special occasions.

My first encounter with wine occurred when I worked in food and wine at a family friend’s retirement home in Indiana, USA and I built on this with more exposure to fine wines through various food service jobs. After moving to Oregon wine country in 2005, I immersed myself in learning all about the wines of Willamette Valley, while working first at Cherry Hill winery in the Eola-Amity Hills, and then in management at some of Portland’s finest restaurants.

Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are considered the king and queen of Willamette Valley wine grapes, but I also became curious about Pinot Gris, which is planted throughout Oregon. When working in restaurants in Portland, I noticed that Pinot Gris wasn’t usually highlighted on wine lists. The perception was that it was less interesting as a variety, perhaps because it was so widely available, and at a lower price point than other whites. Yet, over the last decade, I’ve gained more respect for this wine and grown to love its many expressions.

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I’ve offered Pinot Gris as a glass pour at ōkta restaurant in downtown McMinnville since it opened in July 2022. The Eyrie Estate Pinot Gris 2021 is delicious with our ōkta carrot snack with farro waffle tart shell, served with miso. It was also an excellent match for a dish on last year’s menu: wild sea bream, radishes, watercress and shiitake mushrooms. And it seems to be gaining more traction in general, with wine merchants introducing drinkers to more producers and styles of the grape.

Most consumers don’t know that Pinot Gris is the result of a genetic mutation that occurred in Pinot Noir. Their DNA profiles are remarkably similar; the colouration of the leaves and grape skin are the main differences. Many of the wine producers with whom I’ve opened bottles of Pinot Gris over the years have learned to coax the best expressions from this grape. Starting in the 1960s, David Lett planted Pinot Gris at Eyrie Vineyards in the Dundee Hills AVA. Its wines have always been rich in texture and flavour, balanced between fruit and acidity, and a versatile pairing.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Gris wines have demonstrated great ageability. Jason Lett, the late David’s son, recently poured a 1982 bottling, and I still remember its texture and richness, the lingering aroma of caramelised white fruit – tasted blind, I would probably have guessed Chardonnay, though the acidity and freshness were still distinguishable. I wish that more local producers would vinify their Pinot Gris to age in the same way that the great grand cru Pinot Gris wines of Alsace do.

Pinot Gris vinified with skin contact shows another aspect to the grape – look out for wines from Antiquum Farm and Big Table Farm. Aromas of these wines range from fresh flowers to candied fruits. At ōkta, we pair this style with the flavours of umami, sashimi-style seafood and chef larder-fermented root vegetables. It brings out the best in the food and highlights the wine’s acidity and lingering mouthfeel.

In general, I pair young Pinot Gris with shellfish and summer salads with white stone fruits. Meanwhile, wines with age would pair beautifully with spring and summer grilled vegetables. Pinot Gris will also hold up with your backyard barbecues, as well as charcoal-roasted chicken.

Discovering Pinot Gris: Acierto’s top picks

Jason Lett at Oregon’s Eyrie Vineyards has continued to make Pinot Gris to the same high quality as his father David, who died in 2008. The 2021 and 2022 Eyrie Pinot Gris ($US30 eyrievineyards.com) are both drinking beautifully now, with bright acidity, but will definitely get better with age. The richness in the mouthfeel and the balance of summer fruits make it the perfect bottle to take to your friends’ spring and summer dinners. Pair with tomato salad, grilled root vegetables and grilled whole fish with chimichurri-inspired sauces.

Some skin-contact Pinot Gris wines are made in a way that gives a dark rosé or lighter style red in the glass. The Ltd+ Wines project, run by husband and wife Bree and Chad Stock, sees grapes sourced from David Hill Winery, which owns some of the oldest vines planted in Forest Grove, just west of Portland. Introducing their Old Vine Skin Fermented Pinot Gris 2022 (currently US$42 for the 2021 on limitedadditionwines.com), the winemakers themselves describe it as neither a red wine nor what might typically be described as an ‘orange’ wine, ‘but utterly its own unique self and completely captivating’. It has definitely captivated me, and I’d pair it with any preparation of pork, as well as rotisserie chicken. I’ve recently cooked my personal version of Filipino chop suey – shrimps and pork mince stir fried with vermicelli rice noodles – and it balances the umami flavours of these dishes perfectly. Or just savour it on its own while reading a great novel on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

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The post The sommelier suggests... Oregon Pinot Gris by Ron Acierto appeared first on Decanter.

Rioja’s high points in a sedate market

Last year was tough for the fine wine market. The Liv-ex 1000 index, one barometer of secondary market prices, fell 14.9% in 12 months to 31 January, although it was still up by nearly 12% in five years.

Trading has been subdued; however, UK merchant Goedhuis & Co reported consumer interest in the release of Marqués de Murrieta’s highly regarded Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial 2012 at the end of 2023. ‘Despite current conditions, we did see some clients returning to purchase the 2012 release,’ said Goedhuis buyer Nathaniel Frankland.

He pointed out that it’s a strong brand with a loyal following, and that the next vintage (2016) won’t arrive for a few years. There was also some interest in lower riced back vintages, he added.

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Come August in the valley, even as the vines have taken on that beautiful, pregnant-with-fruit look, those of us who live here start to bite our nails. A kind of climate PTSD descends over the collective mood. It’s wildfire season – a term I’d barely ever heard, never mind used, just a decade ago.

I suppose that every wine lover thinks about the weather more than most other people. But having evacuated from my home four times over the last several years, I watch weather very differently now. I am wary. As the growing season unfolds, I can sense the winemakers around me holding their breath.

And 2023 was no exception. It was a year no one will ever forget. But not because of fire or frost or rain, or relentless heat; because 2023 was as perfect as any Napa vintage in living memory. It was Napa’s ‘1961 Bordeaux’.

Silky & captivating

It’s a tricky thing, evaluating a vintage. Even in a tiny 50km-long swath of land like the Napa Valley, there are so many factors that magnify the differential. Elevation alone has a 10-times spread here: some of Napa’s vineyards lie at 60m above sea level, some at about 600m. The rugged mountains, crevices and canyons present on both sides of the valley mean that vineyards face in every possible direction.

Warren Winiarski, the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars (now owned by Italy’s Marchesi Antinori group), once said to me that Napa makes ‘here-I-am wines’ – wines that bounce out in front of you like extroverted teenagers.

But two months after the 2023 harvest, the Cabernets and Merlots I tasted, at just a few weeks old, were nothing like Winiarski’s description. Instead, they were graceful, fresh, deeply flavourful, and so silky that they were absolutely captivating. The Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs were, at the same time, restrained as well as rich. Cathy Corison, who has made 47 vintages of Napa Valley wine, expressed the feelings of many winemakers when she said: ‘After so many challenging years, I am so grateful for the abundant and delicious 2023 vintage.’

The growing season itself proceeded like a slow, steady heartbeat. It was exceptionally long and very cool. Many vineyards were harvested in November, a full two months after they would have normally been picked.

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The season also started cool and late. During the 2022/2023 winter, when the vines were still dormant, northern California had been drenched by more than a dozen atmospheric rivers that dropped huge amounts of rain, replenishing underground aquifers, but also keeping the ground wet and cool.

As the summer rolled on, we all braced for late-summer heat spikes. None came. August melded into September and still the gentle weather continued. ‘By 15 September, we were all in a state of fear,’ said Lee Hudson, owner with his wife Cristina of Hudson Vineyards in Carneros. ‘What if it rained? What if a wildfire started?’ But the clear skies and the cool sun continued. No heat domes, no wildfires, no rain.

September became October, and the grapes continued their magical slow ripening. The tannins matured gently; layer after layer of flavours were laid down; sugars progressed evenly.

By the time that picking began in the vineyards, the valley’s winemakers were ecstatic. ‘The Cabernets are so complex, so precise and so focused,’ said Matt Crafton, winemaker at Chateau Montelena. ‘The energy, freshness and tension in the wines is extraordinary. Even at just a few weeks old, they’ve gone beyond mere fruitiness; they are sophisticated.’

Matt Crafton, Chateau Montelena. Credit: Chateau Montelena

Magnificent value

The ‘beyond fruitiness’ allowed for other flavours to show themselves, too, among them savoury and floral notes. In a hot vintage, these can be baked out of a Cabernet or obscured by alcohol. But in my tastings, many of the 2023 wines showed lavender and violet notes, as well as a wild, Californian, foresty character – a heady aroma of chaparral with bay, fir and madrone trees.

‘One of the things I look for is energy in Cabernet grapes,’ said Meghan Zobeck, winemaker at Burgess Cellars. ‘Energy makes a Cabernet that’s lively and ready to drink now, but also one that will age for decades.’

For me, the 2023 Cabernets have something more, too – they have beauty. They are rich without being heavy. Freshness hums through the fruit, giving the wines an exceptional sense of aliveness. They possess an electrically vivid blue-red colour. And even young, they have long, long finishes.

Like every Napa winemaker I’ve talked to about the 2023s, I have never witnessed so magnificent a vintage in the Napa Valley. In 2023, ‘here-I-am’ became ‘here’s once-in-a-century’.

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Located on the highest point overlooking the village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, this charming, peaceful and welcoming estate offers luxurious accommodation, an 18th-century exclusive-use château, Michelin star Les Belles Perdrix restaurant, and a state-of-the-art, family-friendly winery that creates an exceptional hospitality experience for wine enthusiasts and discerning travellers alike.

The estate’s roots trace back to 1745 when the property belonged to the Abbé de Sèze, who built the grand house still standing today. In 1850, Raymond Troplong created its flourishing vineyards with 37 hectares under vine, 27 of which are used to produce the estate’s grand vin and the rest for its second wine Mondot.

Troplong then changed hands twice, with much of its success and renown owed to Christine Valette-Pariente, who ran it alongside her husband Xavier Pariente for just over 30 years. In recognition of its rising critical acclaim, it was promoted in 2006 to the prestigious rank of Premier Grand Cru Classé in the St Emilion classification.

The estate was then acquired in 2017 by French insurance company SCOR for a reported €178m.

Significant investments have been made over the years starting with the onboarding of talented winemaker Aymeric de Gironde from St-Estèphe second growth Cos d’Estournel as well as bringing in a new winemaking consultant and increasing land holdings. Outwardly, ambitious renovation projects also started with Aymeric overseeing the modernisation of the winemaking facilities with a state-of-the-art vat room and stunning barrel room or ‘cathedral cellar’ with its 12-metre ceiling accentuated by beams of vertical lights and four concrete columns which suspend the glass walkway connecting either side.

Credit: Romain Ricard

Luxury accommodation

The château building has been restored to the highest standards possible with two lavish dining rooms, an incredible professional kitchen, five bedroom suites and a fully-stocked high-end wine cellar. A breathtaking Mediterranean-inspired pool offers unobstructed, panoramic views over the vineyards towards St-Emilion and its 12th century monolithic bell tower. Priced at €12,000 a night it’s not cheap, but it epitomises five-star hotel service (including a butler) while making it feel like you’re living in your own private residence.

Additional accommodation The Keys offers two one-bedroom and two, two-bedroom suites that are refined yet retain a rustic, countryside charm with three of the four in an annex adjacent to the main building. Each has its own patio for alfresco breakfasts or aperitifs as well as beautiful bathrooms and views of the 2ha park surrounding the château and the village beyond.

For extra privacy, opt for the quaint, two-bedroom, two-bathroom Vineyard House, perfect as a cosy bolthole in the winter with its open fire. In summer, look out over eye-level vines benefitting from the stunning sunset over the horizon.

Guests can either walk into the village of St-Emilion, or use electric bikes to cycle the short trip.

Tours, tasting and Michelin dining

Credit: Bernhard Winkelmann

Day visitors are also spoilt for choice. Immersive and family-friendly guided tours and tastings offer insights into the estate’s winemaking philosophy from grape to glass and provide a glimpse into the meticulous craftsmanship that goes into each bottle of Troplong Mondot. Guests can traverse the vines in an old Land Rover – passing horses who work the land instead of tractors – with wellies on hand in rainy weather. Kids are just as looked after too with their own wellies, miniature electric Land Rovers and activity books to keep them occupied while parents taste a range of the estate’s wines upstairs in the tasting room and on the deck overlooking the vineyards.

There is also an on-site shop selling wine, and estate-made produce including amazing honeys and chocolate sauces, as well as an area dedicated to the engraving of personalised bottles and wooden cases for gifts or keepsakes.

To satisfy culinary cravings, Château Troplong Mondot boasts an exceptional fine-dining experience at its one-Michelin-star restaurant, Les Belles Perdrix. Helmed by acclaimed head chef David Charrier and unbelievable pastry chef Adrien Salavert, the restaurant showcases the finest seasonal ingredients with meticulous attention to detail in a minimalist contemporary space. Diners are seated at tables with immersive views of the vines through floor-to-ceiling windows and of the rolling landscape from the outdoor terrace.

Credit: Château Troplong Mondot

The encouragement and preservation of biodiversity is at the forefront of activities across the estate – not least in providing the restaurant with produce from the vegetable gardens, poultry and pig enclosures – but also to help the vineyards thrive. De Gironde and his team have ambitiously committed to carbon neutrality by 2050 with all electricity used generated sustainably by creating and burning pellets from removed vine shoots.

Whether you’re a seasoned wine enthusiast or simply seeking an idyllic retreat in the heart of Bordeaux‘s wine country, Château Troplong Mondot promises an unforgettable experience, where heritage, hospitality – and some of Bordeaux’s finest wines – come together in perfect harmony.

Château Troplong Mondot is located approximately 45 minutes by car from the city of Bordeaux. For further information, see the Château Troplong Mondot website.

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Beth Willard, Matthew Forster MW and Pierre Mansour tasted 48 wines, with 3 Outstanding and 20 Highly recommended.

Rioja Viñedos Singulares: Panel tasting scores

48 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 3

Highly recommended 20

Recommended 20

Commended 2

Fair 3

Poor 0

Entry criteria: producers were invited to submit up to two current release wines, red and / or white, classified as ‘Vino de Viñedo Singular’ as per the regulations of DOCa Rioja

This was an intriguing tasting that threw up some surprises, much like the viñedo singular category itself. Since the 2017 harvest, producers in Rioja have been permitted to classify specific vineyard sites, shifting the focus from the ageing process to the wine’s origin. In this tasting, we assessed wines from the first five vintages produced within this designation.

The highest scoring wines offered the clearest varietal character and sense of place. Among the three Outstanding wines (see below), the Garnacha-dominant blend of Quiñón de Valmira displayed the red cherry fruit that’s typical of the variety, accented by the flinty freshness of the higher zones of Monte Yerga. Meanwhile, Tronco Negro – from 90-year-old vineyards – exemplified the old-vine concentration that’s demanded by the category (vines must be at least 35 years old and yield at least 20% below the average for the rest of the DOCa).

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores from the Rioja Viñedos Singulares panel tasting

Viñedos Singulares panel tasting scores

Wines were tasted blind

The judges

Beth Willard is involved in sourcing wines for both the on- and off-trade in the UK, with a particular focus on Spain and Eastern Europe. Formerly buying manager at Direct Wines, she is a DWWA Co-Chair and also a member of Spain’s Gran Orden de Caballeros del Vino

Matthew Forster MW is an independent wine consultant and education specialist, and founder of The Wine Partnership. A former director at the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, he has a particular passion for the food and wine cultures of Spain and Portugal

Pierre Mansour is director of wine at The Wine Society, and has been buying The Society’s Spanish wines since 2008. He is a member of Spain’s Gran Orden de Caballeros del Vino, and a DWWA joint Regional Chair for Spain

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Born in Athens, Carolina Doriti has worked as a chef, recipe developer, restaurant consultant and food journalist, and is the culinary producer of the USA TV series My Greek Table, presented by Diane Kochilas. Carolina is also the Athens bureau chief for Culinary Backstreets, a company that runs gastronomy tours around the world.

I have lived most of my life in Athens, a city that blends and balances the ancient with the modern. This blend is how I experience this age-old culture’s cuisine. Its roots are ancient, its core has been preserved, yet over the years it has harmoniously developed and been touched by the course of history, from West and East. Over the last 20 years or
so, there has been a big turn towards traditional regional cooking and local artisanal products. The simplicity of traditional cuisine has been re-evaluated and appreciated further for its health benefits and respect for the ingredients that define it. Greek chefs are making their mark on the global culinary scene, winning awards for their creativity, and from high-end restaurants to simple tavernas, Greek cuisine is thriving.

This book is my offering to the history and heritage of Greek cuisine and culture, and I hope that it will help people to learn, share and enjoy the wonderment of what passionate home cooks and chefs in Greece have been privy to and revelling in for generations.

Artichoke & caper stuffed calamari

This is not a common or traditional recipe from any part of Greece; it is my own invention. I was inspired by the ways calamari is stuffed in Greece, often involving rice or just tomatoes and feta. The artichokes pair really well here with the herbs, as does the calamari with the tangy, citrussy sauce. When I have friends over and I wish to turn this dish into something more shareable, I slice them like sushi rolls; they are easier to eat that way, and also look beautiful. This is great with a good retsina.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 6 large calamari, each about 400g
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 100ml dry white wine
• 100ml warm vegetable stock or water

For the filling

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 5 spring onions (scallions), chopped
• 300g artichoke hearts, fresh or frozen, cut into small chunks
• 100ml dry white wine
• 1.5 tbsp lemon juice
• 150ml warm vegetable stock or water 50g cracked wheat
• 3 tbsp chopped dill
• 3 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 tbsp capers (rinsed if salt-packed), roughly chopped
• finely grated zest of 1 small lemon
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the lemon & dill sauce

• 40ml lemon juice
• 125ml olive oil
• 1 tbsp chopped dill

Method

1. Wash and clean the calamari. Set aside in a colander to drain.
2. For the filling, place a large pan over a medium heat. Add the olive oil and sauté the onion for 6-7 minutes until soft and glossy. Add spring onions and artichokes, stir for a couple of minutes until the artichokes soften. Pour in the wine, wait for a minute or so, then add the lemon juice and stock or water and turn the heat down to medium- low. Mix in the cracked wheat, season with salt and pepper, and gently simmer for about 10 minutes, until most of the liquid has been absorbed and the artichokes are fork-tender. Remove from the heat and mix in the herbs, capers and lemon zest.
3. Using a teaspoon, stuff the calamari with the artichoke filling, pushing the filling down into the tubes with the back of the spoon. Seal the tentacle end using two toothpicks for each calamari, attaching the tentacles to the sticks, too – make sure you haven’t over-stuffed so that they don’t seal with the toothpicks. Pierce the body here and there with a toothpick to prevent it from bursting while cooking.
4. Place a wide pot with a tight-fitting lid over a medium heat and add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Once hot, place the stuffed calamari in the pot. They will sizzle. Let them cook for a couple of minutes on each side, flipping them over. Season with salt and pepper, then pour in the wine, followed by the warm stock or water, and drizzle with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Season with a little black pepper and cover with the lid. Cook for about 20-30 minutes until most of the liquid has been absorbed and the calamari are fork-tender.
5. Meanwhile, make the dressing. Add the lemon juice to a bowl. Slowly pour in the olive oil while whisking quickly. It should look rather yellowish and thickened. Mix in the dill along with salt and pepper to taste.
6. Serve the calamari either whole or sliced, drizzled with the sauce.

Salt of the Earth: Secrets and Stories from a Greek Kitchen by Carolina Doriti was published by Quadrille in March 2023 (£27 hardback)

The wines to drink with artichoke & caper stuffed calamari

By Fiona Beckett

The artichoke in the recipe may be the element that flashes warning lights to any wine lover (it tends to make any accompanying wine taste sweet), but in fact, it’s the lemon zest and herbs that are likely to be the more dominant notes. Given the fashionability of Greek wines, it would be perverse not to start on home turf, and please don’t be put off by Carolina’s suggestion of retsina – there are some highly drinkable ones around these days. Otherwise the obvious option is Assyrtiko, although you could go for one of the more modest Greek white blends that are starting to appear in the UK. Other dry whites would work well, too. Albariño and the slightly better value Alvarinho from neighbouring Portugal spring to mind. A Txakoli would be interesting, as would some of the surprisingly fresh, crisp whites you find in southern Italy, such as Greco di Tufo or Carricante (the grape used to make most Etna whites). Not Sauvignon, though, I suggest.

Wines selected by our Decanter experts

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These line-ups give me insight into place, time and weather, and prompt questions. How has a specific vintage evolved over the years? What behind-the-scenes dramas of frost, hailstorms or heatwaves have found their way into tastes and aromas? I treasure surprises, such as a wine from a scorching, heatwave vintage that is still fresh after a decade, and what that tells me about the site it comes from.

What ties the bottles together is the vineyard. An analytical deep dive into 10 or 20 vintages to discover the stamp of terroir reminds me of listening to an opera singer’s performances from young dazzle to a voice beginning to fade away, yet with poignant layers of complexity.

Happily, châteaux in Bordeaux, where great wines can age for a century, are fond of staging such events to show off their liquid history. During Bordeaux’s en primeur week in April 2023, I attended three brilliant verticals, at Château Haut-Bailly (grand cru classé de Graves), Clos Fourtet (St-Emilion 1er grand cru classé B), and Château Ducru-Beaucaillou (St-Julien 2ème cru classé), each followed by a fabulous meal. All charted individual journeys across time, and made clear that focus, commitment, dreams and
ambition are as important to upping quality as plenty of money – and in the 21st century, these can mitigate bad weather.

Clos Fourtet’s 2020 vintage, the final wine in a 20-year vertical tasting held last year. Credit: Marie-Amelie Journel

Graves elegance

Château Haut Bailly’s 25-year, 1998-2022 event, held in a quiet stone-walled cellar room and the château’s elegant dining room, highlighted the decades after American banker Robert Wilmers purchased the Pessac-Léognan estate. He and general manager Véronique Sanders immediately embraced an haute couture approach to viticulture. During the tasting, I could see the effects in the precision and refinement of the 2004 vintage, with another step up with the 2008, and a third in 2016. Since Wilmers’ death in 2017, his son Chris has continued his legacy.

What stood out most was the consistency of quality and style, especially in off-vintages such as 2011, with its cold, wet summer. The hallmarks in all were elegance, subtlety and balance, with a continuing upward curve of purity and precision. Recent vintages are larger in scale, with a suave opulence, but the essential personality continues to show through.

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St-Emilion freshness

Clos Fourtet’s 20-year vertical, 2001-2020, showed off the journey of the Cuvelier family at this St-Emilion 1GCC property since they purchased it in 2001. I could taste and smell the gradual shift towards less oak influence – down from 18 months in 80% new barrels for the 2001 vintage to 40% in barrel samples of 2022.

Rather than a simple older-to-younger line-up, wine flights were divided by style. In comparing those from lighter years together, then a group from sunny vintages, such as 2003, I was surprised to detect in all of them the freshness that comes from vines growing on the limestone plateau. Among the Les Iconiques set, a shining, deep 2001 stood out, while in Les Exceptionnels, great vintages 2005, ’10, ’16, ’18, ’19 and ’20 wowed with the kind of succulent fruit evident in the 1998 and 1989 with dinner. It was clear that the château never embraced the supercharged, opulent style favoured by (now-retired) critic Robert Parker as so many St-Emilion estates did.

Medoc seduction

I could hear church bells ringing in the distance at the beginning of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou’s 20-year vertical – from 2003, when current owner Bruno Borie took over managing his family’s property, to 2022. Older vintages poured at an extravagant four-hour lunch, such as the 64-year-old cedar-scented 1959, were serious evidence of the wines’ longevity.

Borie, too, divided wines into groups, with names such as Challenges (such as 2013), Greats (2010), Underestimated (2017), Classics (2016), Excellence: a New Era (since 2018). They were nods to other dimensions to consider during a vertical tasting. Was 2017 really underestimated? At Ducru, yes.

With the 2004 vintage, Borie began changing viticulture and winemaking, lowering yields, fine-tuning the vineyard, and investing in a new cellar. The gradual effects show up in the subsequent vintages, especially with silkier, softer tannins. And especially from 2016, the wines seem more seductive, plush and rich.

Time travel

There’s another aspect to vertical tastings that tantalises me: they carry us into the past. With Saint-Marcellin cheese at the Ducru lunch, we sipped a still intensely flavoured 1923 and a delicate, fading 1920, the year of the estate’s 200th anniversary. I savoured the latter while recalling that this was the year America gave women the right to vote.

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