The New Wine Review Weekly: 2022 Bordeaux, NYT's Sam Sifton, How Boulderites Drink

Welcome to Volume 1, Version 1, Edition 1, Number 1 of The New Wine Review’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!

Now let’s talk wine. 

2022 BORDEAUX EN PRIMEUR

What you need to know

The early results are in and 2022 was a very fine vintage in Bordeaux, but not “the blockbuster some might have you believe,” says NWR’s Christy Canterbury MW. “The Bordelais are phenomenal salespeople, but in reality 2022 was a very difficult year.” 

Other key takeaways:

• These wines are huge. Dark, inky colors; loads of tannins. The 2022s are also relatively low in acidity, but surprisingly, they’ve got great freshness and energy. Many will need time to come around because they’re big and concentrated. 

• Prices continue to climb. Many of the marquee wines in 2022 are impressively good, and early indications are that prices for the top wines will see significant year-over-year increases (more than a few producers have already launched with price increases well over 20%). At this point, much of the anticipated future appreciation is now factored into the en primeur prices.

• On the Left Bank, Saint-Estèphe is the hands-down winner. Have a look at our Tasting Brief to go deep on the wines worth paying attention to (including 96-point showings from Calon, Cos and Montrose). It’s cooler in Saint-Estèphe because the peninsula narrows in that area and gets more of the Atlantic breeze, which helped mitigate the otherwise hot, dry weather. But you also shouldn’t miss the top wines from Pauillac, which had a very nice year, too.

• You have to do your homework in this vintage. These are expensive gambles to make if you don’t buy carefully. In general, however, Saint-Estèphe and the northern Médoc had the best, most consistent showings.

To understand how to pick your way through the 2022s, we’ve got an overall strategy guide for you. We’ve also released the first of several tasting briefs on 2022 Bordeaux (this one covering Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac, Médoc and Haut-Médoc). Don’t miss the Potensac, a top value performer. And stay tuned for many more reviews, expert commentary and interviews on Bordeaux en primeur in the coming days.

NYT COOKING’S SAM SIFTON

On dubious trend stories and the delights of bar food

Sam Sifton is a man of excellent taste and many opinions. We sat down with him for a wide-ranging conversation on everything from his epiphany upon tasting Château Lafite-Rothschild to the pig’s feet jelly he wishes everyone would make at home. A quick sampler of Sam’s takes pulled from NWR’s full interview with The New York Times’s food czar: 

• “One thing I remember from my time as restaurant critic: if you spend a lot of time consuming really elegant cuisines and wines over and over, it can feel a little like death by massage. Often, if I’ve had a string of [those] meals, I find myself craving well-done buffalo chicken wings. Really well-done—extra fried, crispy, not flabby. And a mountain of celery with some blue cheese and ranch. And a yellow beer that’s so cold there are little flecks of ice in it. I don’t know if that’s for sure my last meal, but you could put me on a diet of smoothies for the next year and I’d be okay if I got to have that before.”

• “Outside of restaurants, people serve their reds too warm and whites too cold.”

• “Young people aren’t drinking as much? I don’t know. We’re always looking for these stories, as journalists. The same places that say this also say young people aren’t having sex as much. Or whatever. It doesn’t seem to me that wine is going anywhere. I’m generally a little skeptical of trend reporting—I call a little B.S. on it. Vaping was supposed to kill cigarettes. Then kids got tired of vaping, and guess what they did? They smoked cigarettes. These things are cyclical; they go in waves.”

WHAT THEY’RE DRINKING IN BOULDER

There’s a quietly excellent wine scene in Boulder, a city mostly known as a spiritual vortex for craft beer. “People here are wildly adventurous wine drinkers,” says Frasca Food And Wine Owner and Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey, “but also really well educated. I worked at the French Laundry, and Bay Area people really know their wine, but Boulder people don’t stay in their lane as much—they’ll try anything.”

According to the other Boulder insiders we spoke to, “anything” includes oddball Friulano wines, Gewürztraminer from the ‘70s, and boatloads of northern Italian reds, which Boulderites can’t seem to get enough of. 

A ‘DAMN GOOD’ YEAR FOR NAPA CABS

2019 was a “spectacular” vintage for Napa Valley Cabernet, according to NWR Senior Editor Virginie Boone. While yields were down and the region remained mired in a megadrought, the wines that did get made were showstoppers. We review 31 terrific values, interesting finds and classically excellent Cabs in our 2019 Napa Valley Tasting Brief, including four(!) 98-point gems.

EXTREMELY GOOD, INCREDIBLY RARE SCOTCH

The world is awash in rare whiskey these days, as producers have learned to manufacture scarcity using special releases, exotic and limited finishing barrels, single cask offerings and other tactics. Not all of these bottles, as whiskey aficionados know, are worth their price tags. But one category of truly excellent whiskies is rare for good reason: unusual releases of independently bottled single malt scotch. These whiskies aren’t easily found because they’re seldom intended to be sold on their own; most are distilled and matured exclusively for use in blends. Their rarity is inherent, rather than by design, says Whiskey Editor Susannah Skiver Barton. And they’re fabulous—if you can find them. Luckily, we’ve got some tips.

WINE BARRELS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN AT WAR

“The great forests in the center of France were once planted to build up the French naval fleet,” writes Adam McHugh in How Wine Brought Me Back From The Dead. “In the mid-1600s, the French finance minister reported to King Louis XIV that the Dutch fleet outnumbered the French navy thirty to one. To supply an armada he hoped would rival the Dutch, the envious Sun King ordered the planting of vast oak forests in the heart of the country including the Tronçais Forest . . . [which] is now among a select handful of French forests that supply the timber for French wine barrels. The French never became the looming sea power the Sun King hoped for, but the trees he planted make the best and most expensive wine barrels in the world.”

WHAT WE’RE DRINKING AND LIKING RIGHT NOW

🍉 Virginie bought a bottle of Midori to make Melon Balls this summer

☀️  Anna is drinking the summery 2021 Cyprès de Toi Rosé at an al fresco dinner

😃 Christy says the 2022 Te Mata Estate Chardonnay from NZ is “joy in a glass”

🌇  Brittany will be watching the sun set with a bottle of Ruth Lewandowski Feints 

🏖️  Susannah spent a beach weekend drinking Something & Nothing spritzes 

🚽 An editor who wishes not to be named spent a lot of money on a 2001 Pfalz Auslese Riesling that tasted like garbage water

VALUES, BARGAINS AND FINDS*

• A quite decent 2017 Barolo for $27

• A very drinkable 2016 Yolo/Mendocino/Monterrey Pinot Noir for $11

• A delightfully fresh 2020 Corsican red for $15

• A light and slightly saline Rioja Blanco for $20

*NWR is not compensated for the links in this section

AROUND THE WINE (AND WHISKEY) WORLD

🏈  Former NFL coach Dick Vermeil’s winery is finally profitable after losing money for the first 14 years

🌿  A potentially huge breakthrough in creating disease-resistant grapevines.

🇺🇲  As the only U.S. president to have participated in battlefield activities while in office, George Washington helped quell the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. But in retirement, the former commander in chief “became a whiskey producer himself, opening a commercial distillery at Mount Vernon that became one of the largest and most profitable in the country.”

🌹  Brangelina’s “War of the Rosé” rages on in southern France. What a mess.

AND FINALLY

We’re new here! 

So if you like what you see in this newsletter or on our site, we implore you to share it with anyone you know who might be interested. And if you’re really interested, subscribe!

Santé!

The NWR Editors

To ensure you continue getting our emails:

• Drag and drop this email to your “primary” tab in Gmail (if it's not already there)

• Add this email ([email protected]) to your contacts or address book

Copyright (C)

Want to change how you receive these emails? You can unsubscribe

View in Browser

Click here to sign up for yourself if this was forwarded to you by a friend