Innehållsförteckning för November 15, 2022 från Wine Spectator

FREE RESOURCES FOR ALL WINESPECTATOR.COM READERS ALPHABETICAL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA CABERNET This year’s annual report takes in more than 800 wines, focusing on the classic-scoring 2019 and 2018 vintages. For a complete list of scores and prices for all wines tasted, go to WineSpectator.com/CabernetAlpha111522. TOP 100 WINES OF THE YEAR On Nov. 7, we begin unveiling the Top 10 Wines of 2022—complete with videos, tasting notes and more—culminating with the Wine of the Year on Nov. 11 and the complete Top 100 list on Nov. 14. Don’t miss the year’s most exciting wines! WHAT AM I TASTING? Test your tasting skills in our mystery wine game. Evevry two weeks, we post a tasting note with clues from the color, aromas, flavors and structure. Then, you guess the variety, region, appellation and age…

Wine investment funds are having a moment—again. After the collapse of several such funds a decade ago, triggered by the Chinese retreat from the luxury wine market, they are again coming on strong. While their methods differ, all wine funds promote a common message: It’s smart to augment your traditional portfolio of stocks and bonds with an alternative investment in ageworthy wine. “You are looking for a low-volatility asset that is uncorrelated to the rest of the economy, and that’s what wine is,” said Tom Gearing, co-founder of London-based wine investment fund Cult Wines. When the stock market plunged in 2008, investment grade wine prices barely budged. So far in 2022, wine is again ignoring stocks: the Livex 1000, a composite of the most widely traded investment-grade wines, is up…

In August, Auction of Washington Wines (AWW) celebrated its 35th year by raising $4 million for Seattle Children’s Hospital, the Washington State University Viticulture and Enology program and industry grant partner Vital Wines. Most events were held live on the grounds of Chateau Ste. Michelle. “For our 35th annual gala, we had the added bonus of being able to gather again in one large tent, and the energy in the room was palpable,” said Laura Kleinhofs, AWW associate director. This year’s festivities brought AWW’s cumulative fundraising total to over $59 million. Seattle Children’s serves as the pediatric and adolescent medical center for Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, the largest region of any children’s hospital in the country. The Viticulture and Enology program at Washington State University is a leader in…

The 2018 vintage set a high water mark for California Cabernet. The year was defined by wines that show a distinctly terroir-driven persona, rippling with energy and offering remarkable precision. This is hands down the new benchmark vintage. By any measure, it would be hard to duplicate its level of success. But 2019 is going to try anyway. “I’m loving this vintage,” Beaulieu Vineyard wine-maker Trevor Durling told me as we tasted through a selection of the winery’s 2019s this past summer. “I was able to extend picking into mid-and late October and get the full phenolic ripeness and texture that I like—all without losing acidity.” Durling joined the Rutherford winery in 2017, and since then he’s tweaked the farming in the estate’s historic vineyards and fine-tuned the winemaking. The…

“I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 18 years old, during my freshman year in Dartmouth College,” explains Brandon Staglin. “It was the scariest and darkest time of my life,” he adds, describing horrifying hallucinations. “I was exhausted and desperate, because I was constantly worried by delusions that I might make some horrible mistake and be sent directly to hell. I was seriously contemplating ending it all for myself.” Now Staglin, 51, is president of One Mind, considered the nation’s most impactful nonprofit in the brain health ecosystem. The organization advances science and improves services for brain and mental health by accelerating collaborative research and advocacy. The goal is to enable all people facing brain health challenges to build healthy and productive lives. One Mind and Staglin Family Vineyard…

THE ITALIAN National Registry of Vine Varieties records the official and historic grape name as Calabrese: “coming from Calabria.” But today, a reported 98% of vine plantings are located in Sicily, making “Nero d’Avola” the more common moniker. Where is it grown? Nero d’Avola is widespread throughout Sicily, second only to Catarratto in total vineyard plantings. This adaptable grape variety thrives along the island’s warm and dry southern shores as well as in the high-elevation inland mountains, and some places in between. Its Sicilian namesake is the town of Avola, located in the Noto DOC in the southeastern corner of the island. But essentially, Nero d’Avola is planted almost everywhere except Mount Etna. How is it made and what are its styles? Nero d’Avola is bottled as both blended and…

The Iron Throne is back, and this time there be dragons aplenty—and plenty more wine! HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, premiered in August, starring the ancestors of all of our favorite and least favorite Targaryens, generally participating in all the same violence and scandal that we’ve come to expect from the series inspired by author George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Fire & Blood novels (as with Game of Thrones, Martin also serves as executive producer for House of the Dragon). The new show takes place about 200 years before the original series, so if you were serving Vintage Wine Estates’ Game of Thrones wines at your Night’s Watch party, you were behind the times. Or were you ahead of them? It’s…

On Aug. 14, a violent storm and small tornado hit the French town of Bédarrides, with 120mph wind gusts and hailstones inflicting damage in vineyards along the eastern side of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. According to local vignerons, the primary impact was felt in La Crau, the famed vineyard in the southeast of the appellation; wineries such as Vieux Télégraphe, Château La Nerthe, Château de Nalys, Domaine La Boutinière and Guillaume Gonnet source fruit from this lieu-dit for their top cuvées. “We estimate that we have lost today between 70% to 90% of the grapes in our Vieux Télégraphe plots,” says Daniel Brunier, head of his namesake family’s estate. Brunier describes the vineyard—where his family has grown grapes since 1890—as “completely shredded; not a leaf is left. Only a few partially bruised grapes…

You don’t need to know everything about capers to appreciate their importance in classic dishes, such as chicken piccata and puttanesca sauce, and the flavor they bring to supporting sides, such as rice and potatoes. The flavor and effect of capers is somewhere between green olives and mustard, to which they are related. They’ll never be the star, but they add bursts of bright piquancy. Capers are the flower buds of a low-growing plant. Typically, the tiny buds are harvested and brined in vinegar. They can also be preserved in salt, which rinses away more easily than vinegar does, so you get a more direct caper flavor. If the buds are allowed to blossom and then wither away, a caperberry will grow in their place. They can be used just…

The landscape of New Zealand wine is certainly different than it was before the COVID pandemic, but resilient winemakers remain focused on the terrific wines they make. Harvest levels for 2022 returned to normal after a difficult 2021 season, and Kiwi winemakers are doing what they do best, making affordable, expressive, cool-climate wines with a strong commitment to sustainability and leadership in the “better for you” wine category. This small wine-producing region faced many of the issues the rest of the world did over the past three years: rising costs for transportation and labor. The sparsely populated country relies on overseas workers for harvest staffing, but COVID-related border restrictions added complications, and cases of Omicron peaked in tandem with the 2022 harvest, putting stress on an already-strained labor supply. Not…

Napa Valley is defined by its two mountain ranges, the Vaca and Mayacamas. Created during the formation of the San Andreas Fault 30 million years ago, the region’s terroir is chiefly attributed to volcanic upsurges and massive landslides—particularly on the Vaca range, which runs along the valley’s eastern edge. Along the western edge runs the Mayacamas range, formed primarily by marine sedimentary soils left by changing sea levels, which caused the nearby San Pablo Bay to ebb and flow along the southern part of the valley. While many of Napa’s most visible wineries and vineyards are situated on the valley floor, along the two main arteries of Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail, there are hidden treasures amid the hills above, including an increasingly significant slice of Napa Valley Cabernet…

ALMOST ubiquitously referred to as Carricante, sometimes with slightly altered spellings; occasionally called Catanese Bianco, and very rarely, Nocera Bianca. In the past, Carricante was sometimes confused with Catarratto. Where is it grown? The world’s plantings of Carricante are found almost entirely on the slopes of Sicily’s Mount Etna, where it has thrived in the mountain’s volcanic soils since ancient times. Based on the star power of wines from Etna and the intriguing results from this distinctive grape, vineyard acreage for Carricante has surged in the past decade. The number of Etna and Etna Superiore white wines bottled increased 37% in the first half of 2022 versus the same six months in 2021, according to the Etna consortium. Carricante excels in Etna’s high-altitude vineyards, with many of the best examples…

At just over 9,900 square miles, Sicily encompasses one DOCG appellation—Cerasuolo di Vittoria—and 23 DOC areas. With the exception of the Etna and Sicilia DOCs, most of Sicily’s DOCs are relatively small, with limited examples shipped to the U.S. The majority of wine from Sicily is bottled under the Terre Siciliane IGT, followed by the Sicilia DOC. Both designations allow the production of sparkling, white, rosé, red and dessert wines. Both allow grapes sourced from anywhere in the region of Sicily, either blended wines or bottlings labeled as single-variety versions (85% or more of the listed variety) or multi-variety versions. The differences between the two are subtle, and comparing Sicilia DOC to Terre Siciliane IGT tells a consumer less about where a wine is from and more about what went…

The 24th annual V Foundation Wine Celebration, which brought more than 450 wine lovers to Nickel & Nickel winery in Oakville, Calif., on Aug. 6, raised nearly $6.5 million for cancer research. The auction was one of several events in a weekend celebrating the legacy of Jim Valvano, the basketball player, coach and ESPN broadcaster known as Jimmy V, who died of cancer in 1993. Since 1999, the auction has raised more than $137 million to support the V Foundation’s total of more than $290 million in research grants awarded nationwide. “Jim Valvano’s legacy impels us to ‘never give up,’ and courage was definitely the theme this year,” said Wine Celebration founder Julie Maples. All of this year’s 25 live-auction lots included wine, and many of the most sought-after lots…

RELATED to northern Italy’s Garganega grape and referred to generically as Catarratto or Catarratto Bianco. For many years Catarratto Bianco Comune and Catarratto Bianco Lucido were thought to be two different varieties, but DNA testing shows that they are two clones of the same variety; Extra Lucido is a third clone. Referring to all Catarratto simply as Lucido is a recent rebranding of the grape, supported in particular by the Sicilia DOC consortium. At this time, most bottlings in the U.S. have not adopted the name change, but more will appear in the future. Where is it grown? Catarratto is Sicily’s most widely planted grape variety and fourth in Italy as a whole. It is found throughout the island, but plantings are concentrated in the western half of Sicily, specifically…

THE SUCCESS and attention given to Mount Etna’s red wines over the past decade has led to the widespread use of Nerello Mascalese as the common name for this native Sicilian variety. Where is it grown? Nerello Mascalese shines brightest as the star of the Etna DOC red wines, where it must be at least 80% of the blend. In that appellation, its usual blending partner is Nerello Cappuccio. Nerello Mascalese also has a strong presence in the far northeastern tip of Sicily, near Messina. It is the primary grape variety from the Faro DOC, which produces only red wines, with Nerello Mascalese accounting for 45% to 60% of the blend. Outside of Etna and Faro the grape is not dominant, but it is planted throughout the island. From these…