“Like a box of fireworks going off all at once,” says Dean about Penfolds’ Grange 2019 one of his Best wines of 2023.
Not a Zalto in sight – but was there a more perfect way to drink a 1995 Cuvée Constance?
With so much going wrong in the world, wine played an increasingly important role for me throughout 2023 not just from appreciating winemaking at a technical level at the many landmark tastings throughout the year, but also drinking those special bottles with friends in often extraordinary places. There were many of those bottles – ones which allow you to get up close and personal with a wine, to think about them at length and to actually drink them! So my Best Wines of 2023 are very much split between wines from tastings and those wines that I actually swallowed… and caressed the bottles afterwards. Maybe.
Best wines of 2023 – with friends
My wine buying started as a hobby in the late 1990s through the auction houses and in 2023 I have returned there and been lucky enough to have picked up some stunning parcels of aged wines in mint condition – from some of my favourite producers.
In the Pyrenees, November 2023
One of these – a Huet Cuvée Constance 1995, Vouvray – I squirreled away in my backpack when walking with some wine chums on a warm November day in the Pyrennes. Once we had reached the summit of a two-hour climb I sprung it on them – chilled, with glasses – where we sipped this elixir in pretty much stunned silence. This is Huet’s top cuvée (above the Premiere Trie), only made in exceptional years, pure and concentrated for sure, but with the residual sugar nicely integrated, a fresh core and balance, and a complexity of aromas and tastes that simply made the world a better place. A candidate for the world’s best energy drink? Undeniably.
From the same parcel I picked up some of the dry wines – from 1990 and 1995. The Huet, Le Mont Sec 1995, Vouvray had some bruised apple as you might expect but a disarming elegance and clarity, which showed yet again just how long you can keep Chenin of this quality. The 1990 was awesome but the ’95 just had the edge in terms of detail and balance.
Dinner at Lynch-Bages, May 2023
Bike to Care is an international charity cycling event, raising funds for hospitality. The first year was 2022 where it was held in Burgundy and the second in Bordeaux where 200km of riding was rewarded with fabulous hospitality with lunches at Lafite and d’Yquem and dinners at Lynch Bages and Haut Bailly. So many great bottles to choose from but the Château Lafite Rothschild 2001, Pauillac served in double magnum took some beating. If you think it’s all fun and games at this event, in just two years Hatch Mansfield and the other teams have raised over €600k helping charities that can often get overlooked in an economic downturn. For a full report on this remarkable event click here.
In front of the fire, rural France, with a mate, lots of contemplative silence
Staying with Bordeaux, was a bottle of Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 1990, Pauillac that I shared with a mate after a day’s cycling (a pattern developing?!). This vintage at Longueville doesn’t have the greatest reputation – a bit too stern and assertive – but on the night it was anything but. This was one of those Bordeaux that just ticked every box. Left Bank perfection and every drop just stunning .
Rousseau, with notes of Strawberry Volvic
A dinner with Miles Davis and Bud Cuchet from Cuchet&co in a pub in East Sussex in late Spring took an unexpected turn when of three wines tasted blind, one turned out to be an Armand Rousseau Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru, Clos St Jacques 2008, it was clearly a Burg’ all guns blazing but I hadn’t quite expected a 4-figure wine of this calibre to a/ be served and b/ have to compete with the air freshener from the nearby lav! Needles to say the wine’s owner is now my new bestie.
Best wines of 2023 – from the tastings
Although I very rarely swallow at a tasting, I might add that I very rarely spit at Corney & Barrow’s DRC tasting. There’s not many times in your life when you utter the words “The Romanée-Conti please” as the sommelier pours you a sample. The Romanée-Conti, 2020 is an extraordinary wine that expresses itself as the most perfect manifestation of a Pinot Noir that is possible to make. Massive, beautiful power with an effortless confidence – fresh, vinous, pure, complex, rounded, delicate, layered, savoury – a mass of contradictions that meet with utter harmony and balance in your mouth. “Everything is perfect” my notes say – both as a descriptor of the wine and a state of mind. The Nadia Comāneci of Pinot. Full report click here.
If you were a ‘no show’ kick yourself really hard now.
There used to be an Aubert de Villaine-endorsed exchange scheme between Burgundy and Central Otago, its disbandment a reflection of the maturity of this winemaking-on-the-edge region of New Zealand’s South Island. At the forefront of the Pinot Noir made here is Valli, whose American winemaker Jenn Parr held a spectacular tasting at London’s 67 Pall Mall club. Early Monday morning was a cruel time slot but, for those present, the sweet smell of top-grade Pinot that filled the room was a perfect way to start a week. The tasting was to showcase the new 2021 vintage but, of the back vintages, Valli Waitaki Pinot Noir 2019 stole the show.
Parr only had .75 tonnes of fruit to play with in this vintage – she describes it as “trying to make wine from cassis.” The power in the wine is monumental – a real walk on the wild side with intense fragrance, savoury undertones and wild energy. This wine is off-the-scale good. On the nose the wine has a range of nuances not witnessed in the other vintages – spices, herbs, olive, maple – on the palate too there is ripe, juicy fruit but other secondary characteristics such as earth and saline. Beautiful, silky tannins with an underlying grip, more tense with a playfully tart finish.
Terrestrial power is also the hallmark of the mountain wines Sebastián Zuccardi is making in Maipú, Argentina. In the case of Finca Canal Uco, 2020, Zuccardi, A Paraje Altamaria it is the acidity and the sense of acidity that the calcaire soil brings. The vineyard that the fruit for this magnificently pure, medium-bodied Malbec, comes from, was planted in 2007 using massal selections from the family vineyards in Maipú. The soils are deep and silty with stones covered in calcium carbonate about a metre down.
There is a perceptible jump in complexity from the two Aluvional wines tasted prior to this. The wine is deep, inky purple; the nose is intense and enchanting with blueberries, smoke, fresh herbs, iodine, violets and dark earth; medium weight in the mouth, I found blue and black fruit (plum, blackberry) with herbs and dark chocolate, the tannins are powdery-fine, with a beautiful purity and a lovely tart twist on the finish. The acidity creates a real ‘zing’ to the fruit and gives the wine freshness, quite remarkably so given the warmth of the 2020 vintage. I had a fascinating chat with Sebastián about the wines here.
Best Syrah to date from this South African winemaker
Another winemaker making plaudits on the international stage is Gottfried Mocke who works for Marc Kent in South Africa on Chocolate Block and the premium wines from Boekenhoutskloof. Kent was in London to show the new 2020 wines and, although the Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 was my wine of the tasting, the new wines were led by a triumphant Boekenhoutskloof Syrah 2020 which Kent reckons this is the best Syrah that Mocke has made to date. This is a stunning Northern Rhône style Syrah, the sixth vintage made with fruit hailing from Swartland where, in this vintage, 88% of the fruit comes from Porseleinberg and 12% Goldmine. Each parcel is vinified separately using 60% whole bunch and maturation takes place over 18 months in large, old oak formats as oppose to the 27 months maturation the library wines we tasted had undergone – the change in the winery resulting in a wine of greater finesse and elegance.
As for the tasting, gorgeous aromatics develop in the glass with black fruit, fynbos, a smoky/ spicy note and pressed flowers. In the mouth the wine is pure, clean and elegant; this is a medium-bodied wine with a good deal of tension and freshness. Lively acidity, textural with fine satin tannins and a sappy grip. I found a dusting of cocoa powder. This one should run and run.
Bruce Tyrrell presented his new 2021 wines at the Michelin-starred restaurant Frog by Adam Handling, a tasting that had the 2021 Semillon as an aperitif – something unthinkable a few years ago without a mouth guard. While his new wines have a more tempered, approachable style it was the library wines that naturally stole the show. Top of the pile was Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon 1998 which was golden deliciousness in a glass. The fruit came again from a hot dry year. Medium to deep gold, the wine is in a late secondary phase with the fruit now tropical (papaya) and the lanolin forward in the mix, with nutty and smoky notes that add to the complexity. The mouthfeel had an oleaginous quality, ripe, rich and creamy with that acidity keeping the wine fresh as a daisy. Interesting to see this wine in a Vermouth bottle, and a clear bottle at that, which was down to the fact that those were the only bottles he could source at the time. A real vin de meditation.
Antinori tasting, Cantinetta Antinori, London
Another case in point was a lunch in June where I drank Antinori with Antinori in Antinori – the Italian dynasty’s new eaterie Cantinetta Antinori in Knightsbridge to which Allegra Antinori had flown in to showcase new and old vintages of Tignanello and Solaia. The latter is a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant blend that comes from a 10 hectare vineyard on the same hill as Tignanello but reflecting really well the estate’s constant search for perfection and tannin management. Solaia 2010 came from one of best vintages in Tuscany and, for me, was the best vintage of Solaia on the day – this wine was more precise, cleaner, although two hours after pouring it changed enormously, picking up more of the meaty aged Sangiovese character. Tasting-wise it was fresh, with clean, black, almost precociously young fruit, intense, slight smoky on the nose, more intense than the ’06. Mouth-filling, fresh, micro-fine tannins, incredibly pure, with an almost creaminess in the mouth. You can feel the acidity more in 2010 with terrific register on the palate. Stunning.
Penfolds’ flagship wine is Grange Shiraz 2019 of course and the apotheosis of its multi-vineyard, multi-region blending philosophy. This is Shiraz sourced from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra and Clare Valley with 3% Cabernet Sauvignon thrown in for good measure, the blend then matured for 19 months in 100% new American hogsheads.
Dense, black and mysterious, this is so fresh, complex and alluring – like a box of fireworks going off all at once. Although it is chock full of rich, ripe dark fruits there is this lively, high-pitched brilliance to the fruit like a black rose perfume. In the mouth the wine is rich and broad with layer upon layer of ‘blackness’ – olive, liquorice, anise, coffee grounds, berry coulis, beetroot, cola, black cherries and spices. A nuttiness too. Although this is just a pup and shouldn’t be drunk for another five or six years, there’s terrific cohesion with firm acidity (7 g/l), and micro-fine tannins holding in place the oodles of sweet, dark, complex, rich loveliness. Although there were so many wines that were on top form at this new release tasting (particularly impressive were the Napa wines), you just cannot fail to pin the rosette on the ‘best in show’. Full report of this monumental tasting – click here.
And finally….
So the best social media post of the year? This little beaut. from Libby Brodie who posted this of Richard Siddle and myself at our annual party during the London Wine Fair. We started The Buyer seven years ago, it’s gone from strength to strength, and working with ‘The Chief’ has been a blessing and a joy. Santé! or whatever it is they say in The Wirral 😉
