Our Chilean Wine of the Year, the Seña Valle de Aconcagua 2021. (Photo from @senawinery.) Purity, freshness and finesse will be remembered as the cornerstone characteristics of Chile’s 2021 vintage, but no wine encapsulates these qualities better in a single package than our Chilean Wine of the Year for 2023, the Seña Valle de Aconcagua 2021. Comprised of 50 percent cabernet sauvignon, 27 percent malbec, 17 percent carmenere and 6 percent petit verdot, the wine captures the essence of the 2021 vintage with remarkable clarity. It’s from a biodynamically farmed vineyard, situated on the cool ..read more

After 40 years of being a wine critic, it is not often that wine bottles surprise me. When I unpacked a box of samples from the new Unterlind winery in Germany’s Mosel Valley, however, my jaw dropped. You see, the typical Mosel wine bottle is a tall green flute, although some producers use Burgundy-shaped bottles for dry wines from pinot grapes. But these squat yet oddly attractive bottles all contained riesling wines. Of course, at JamesSuckling.com we never let the packaging of a wine influence our impression of it or the way it is rated. The real test is always how the wine smells and t ..read more

Left: Calera winemaker Mike Waller. | Right: James (right) tastes 2022s at Inglenook winery. California continues to impress in this week’s tasting report with so many outstanding quality 2021s, both red and white, as well as a few special 2020s, such as the pinot noirs of Calera. According to Calera winemaker Mike Waller, his 2020s were exceptional quality because his old vines, some more than 40 years old, delivered superb fruit despite the drought conditions. “Vines are like teenagers for about 20 years,” he said. “And then they grow up and they can talk to you. They produce wines with ..read more

Johanna and Lucas Pichler at F.X. Pichler made our Austrian Wine of the Year, the F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Unendlich 2021. The position of Austrian wines right now is somewhat two-sided. On the one hand, the Alpine republic has never been more successful in exporting its wines around the globe, but on the other hand 2022 was quite a challenging vintage for the dry white wines for which it is best known. This was the result of the unusual weather pattern during the growing season, particularly the heavy rain in August. Once again, gruner veltliner, the nation’s signature grape, took the ..read more

Taking place on December 1 at the Grand Hyatt Erawan, the sold-out Great Wines of the World event in Bangkok concluded our 2023 events season, bringing together more than 1,500 wine enthusiasts and those from the wine trade and hospitality industry. There were 200 award-winning wines from top regions around the world were available to taste, providing a platform for attendees to network and explore new releases from France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, Chile and other countries and regions. All the wines were rated 90+ points, including several 98- and 99-pointers and two perfec ..read more

Our Wine Choice for this week could be considered an elder statesman of the Super Tuscan category. The Castellare di Castellina Toscana I Sodi di S. Niccolò 2019 was first produced in 1977 and this edition may be one of the best ever. It’s a blend of 85 percent sangioveto (aka sangiovese) and 15 percent malvasia nera grapes from vineyards planted in the particularly hard (“sodo” in Italian), compact soils around the ancient church of S. Niccolo, which lies within the estate’s boundaries near the town of Castellina in Chianti, in the heart of the Chianti Classico zone. The two grape varieti ..read more

Left: Duckhorn winemaker Renee Ary. | Right: Beautiful old vines in St Helena bask in the morning sun. It has been a while since I have given four wines perfect scores of 100 points and rated another dozen 99 points during a two-week tasting trip. I wasn’t counting the number of great wines I rated in Napa Valley last week, but many of them were incredible quality with pure and focused fruit framed with precise and defined tannins. The harmony in most of the wines was very, very impressive, but at the same time there were some powerful and tannic wines that were equally breathtaking. And t ..read more

JamesSuckling.com is back with its Great Wines of the World event in Miami on Feb. 29 and March 1, 2024. Featuring a record-breaking 350 producers from 50 of the best wine regions in the world, this edition of Great Wines of the World promises to be the biggest of them all! Read about the full lineup of wineries below, and then stay tuned to the JamesSuckling.com social media channels as we reveal each day which new producers that will be in attendance.  Great Wines of the World Miami is the premier international wine event in 2024 for producers, wine lovers and wine trade fro ..read more

El Enemigo Cabernet Franc Gualtallary Gran Enemigo Single Vineyard 2019 was an easy choice for our No. 1 Argentine wine. As the best-priced deal among the few dozen 100-point wines we rated during our tastings of nearly 40,000 bottles this year, El Enemigo Cabernet Franc Gualtallary Gran Enemigo Single Vineyard 2019 is an easy choice for our Argentine Wine of the Year. This cabernet franc-based red from Gualtallary not only represents remarkable value at about $100 but also epitomizes Argentina’s unwavering dedication to producing unique wines from extreme, high-altitude terroirs. This is ..read more

Domaine Zind Humbrecht's Rangen grand cru site. The vertical tasting of Domaine Zind Humbrecht’s rieslings from the Rangen grand cru site in Alsace, France, earlier this month only went back to the 1978 vintage, but it was arguably the most remarkable vertical tasting I have attended in recent years. You see, although the Rangen has been cultivated since at least the early Middle Ages, just like the grand crus of Burgundy, paradoxically it is also a new site. As far as anyone knows, no bottles of Rangen wine from before 1978 exist. This is because for a long time no wine was bottled. In fa ..read more