Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 79

34TH A NNUA L B U YING G U ID E

CA LI FO RN I A S PA RKL IN G
BEST BRUT ROSÉ
521499

94 | Roederer Estate

$75

2012 Anderson Valley L'Ermitage Brut
Rosé ^ It's rare to ﬁnd a sparkling wine outside of Champagne with this rosé's ﬁnesse.
The Roederer Estate team, led by Arnaud
Weyrich and under the guidance of Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon in Reims, are rosé specialists.
They produce this wine by ﬁrst selecting the
top fruit from Roederer's 580 acres of estateowned vineyards, blending virtually equal
amounts of chardonnay and pinot noir as the
base wine, and including a small amount of
delicately macerated pinot noir for color and
fragrance. That points up the pale-pink raspberry freshness of this eight-year-old youth.
Like the best releases of L'Ermitage Rosé,
those ﬂavors have precision, a concentrated
presence and ethereal ﬁnesse. -J.G. (W&S
10/20; 518 cases) §

CA LI FO RN I A W HIT E
BEST BLEND
521401

93 | Tablas Creek

$45

2018 Adelaida District Esprit Blanc de
Tablas ^ Tablas Creek's top white has been
roussanne-dominant for several vintages
now, and they've learned how to capture the
variety's elegant ﬂeshiness without letting it
get blowsy, propping it up with higher-acid
whites, like grenache blanc, picpoul, clairette
and picardin. This wine smells of apple pulp
and honey at ﬁrst go, giving up little but
seductive texture. On the second day open,
the wine becomes grand, the weight of roussanne comfortable and powerful, with a
lemony, crisp apple contour. -P.J.C. (W&S
10/20) §

BEST RIBOLL A GIALL A
521455

93 | Matthiasson

$49

2018 Napa Valley Matthiasson Vineyard
Ribolla Gialla ^ Steve Matthiasson was one
of the early ribolla acolytes in Napa Valley,
having been introduced to the variety by
George Vare, who had brought some cuttings from Friuli. Matthiasson was managing Vare's vineyard at the time, and later took
cuttings to graft over the merlot in his home
vineyard in Oak Knoll in 2006. He fermented
this ribolla as whole clusters in an open-top
tank and then, after pressing, moved it into
neutral oak barrels to rest undisturbed for
18 months. It's only 12 percent alcohol,
its orange hue a bow to the wines of Josko

Gravner, who originally supplied the cuttings to Vare. Nacho Monclús, of Brooklyn's
Camperdown Elm, enjoyed its gingery kick-
"a great introduction to orange wine; this
isn't super extreme." In fact, there's clarity
to the fruit, in notes of pear that linger with
the tannic spice. Lovely. -J.G. (W&S 10/20;
293 cases) §

BEST SAUVIGNON BL ANC

Wine & Spirits

west-facing, 1.4 acres planted in 2002 on a
nearby sandstone hillside. The cool 2018 season produced a chardonnay that deﬁes oxidation, still beautiful a week after it was ﬁrst
opened, destined to thrive for decades. -J.G.
(W&S 10/20; 610 cases) §
520929

95 | Au Bon Climat

$40

2016 Santa Maria Valley Nuits-Blanches
au Bouge Chardonnay ^ Grand, even a bit
showy, this bundles majestic oak and sumptuous fruit. Jim Clendenen's most extravagant annual effort, it's a blend of lots from
Bien Nacido and Le Bon Climat, aged in
new François Frères barrels for 18 months
and released late. Beneath all of the cinnamon-toasty oak, nutty lees and honeycomb
richness is a wine of impressively succulent,
round, ﬂeshy fruit. But rather than feeling
heavy, it feels powerful, the ﬁrm acidity and
barrel-driven structure giving it elegant contours. Cellar. -P.J.C. (W&S 10/20; 525 cases) §

518147

93 | St. Supéry

$22

2018 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc (Best
Buy) ^ Michael Scholz and his team grow some
of the best sauvignon blanc in Napa Valley
at Dollarhide Ranch, St. Supéry's estate in
the eastern hills. The long, cool harvest season allowed the fruit for this wine to ripen
into a brisk, gentle, mouthwatering ﬂavor of
green lime and agave. It's the best vintage
of the wine we've tasted, on par with some
of the exceptional releases of the Dollarhide
Estate Vineyard bottling (that one being a
block selection that sees some oak; this one
is fermented entirely in stainless steel). Well
worth buying by the case, this is a delicious
white for ceviche, spicy Thai prawns, or any
roast ﬁsh. -J.G. (W&S 12/19) §

BEST CHARDONNAYS
521063

96 | Hirsch

$60

2018 Sonoma Coast Estate Chardonnay ^
This is among the best Hirsch chardonnays
we've tasted, a wine with an ornate, almost
baroque complexity woven out of fruit
grown on the sandstone ridge along the San
Andreas fault. It offers a completely different
kind of complexity and depth of ﬂavor than
a great Burgundy-California coastal casual,
yet precise. If you were to travel to David
Hirsch's remote vineyard and feel the blast
of the Paciﬁc winds against the ridge as you
stand alongside the vines he planted in 1994
on a steep, rocky slope facing directly toward
the sea, you might begin to sense the pure,
terroir-driven nature of this wine. Along with
fruit from those 2.5 acres, this wine includes
Hirsch's younger block of chardonnay, also

C ALIFORNIA RED
BEST CABERNET FRANC
521282

96 | Corison

$100

2017 St. Helena Napa Valley Helios Sunbasket Vineyard Cabernet Franc ^ Sunbasket is on St. Helena's western benchlands,
just north of Cathy Corison's winery. She
purchased the vineyard in 2014, most of it
planted to cabernet sauvignon, with three
short rows of franc that she bottles as Helios.
If you enjoy silken elegance in your cabernet,
you owe it to yourself to ﬁnd a bottle of this
wine. It offers the kind of sunny generosity
that Napa Valley so easily gives; here, that
effusive cornucopia of ﬂavor is grounded
in earthy detail, focused so it reads as light
rather than weight. This wine's sense of ease
with its layers of complexity suggests it will
age and develop for a decade or more. -J.G.
(W&S 10/20; 75 cases) §

BEST CABERNET SAUVIGNON
521302

96 | Heitz

$250

2015 Napa Valley Martha's Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ^ Extended bottle age at
Heitz's cellar is a long-term investment in a
wine like this 2015 Martha's Vineyard. Mysteriously, the wine manages to be plump
and austere at once, like an aristocrat who's
a little soft in the middle but tough as nails.
The vintage has the eucalyptus scent that
famously marks this vineyard's cabernet, a
complex element in the midst of the wine's
fresh, bright red fruit and silken texture. Seriously grand Napa Valley cabernet, bristling

WINE & SPIRITS

BUYING GUIDE 2021

https://stsupery.com/

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020