Wines

99 Points! One of the few 2022 Tuscan wines where you can really see that this will benefit from a few years in bottle, right now it is, hovering on the edge of something delicious, vibrating over the tannic architecture, feathered, campfire smoke, fennel, blackberry, liquorice and crushed peonies, and the bitter fennel and slate scrape, dense, contrast of textures and flavours like only truly great wines can do, a reflection of skilful construction. A gorgeous wine, slowly stretching out in the palate, 65% new oak for ageing.- Jane Anson

97 Points! Tasted a few months after it was bottled, the Ornellaia 2022 Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia will be coming to market in March 2025. The blend is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 10% Petit Verdot. The wine sees 18 months of aging with up to 70% new oak, but the trick, proprietor Lamberto Frescobaldi tells me, is drawing from a large group of coopers with different toast levels and forests. "I don't want to make a wine of any one tonnellerie," he says. The oak element is crucial to the identity of this wine that reveals dark fruit, blackberry, sweet spice and cinnamon. Most of the vines were planted in the 1980s, and the average age of the plants is over 20 years old. Fruit comes from many parcels, including Bellaria, Bellaria Nuova, Bellaria Alta, Pero, Fosso, Vigna Vecchia and Stallina. Indeed, some 80 wines are made before final blending. The 2022 vintage will be remembered for its full-bodied appeal, concentrated fruit and generous oak renderings. Petit Verdot plays a slightly larger role in this vintage and was one of the surprise hits of 2022. It serves to elongate the wine and adds to its length. The wine's abundant fruit weight cedes to elegantly integrated tannins. This vintage will appeal to die-hard Ornellaia enthusiasts. - Monica Larner, robertparker.com

99 Points! One of the few 2022 Tuscan wines where you can really see that this will benefit from a few years in bottle, right now it is, hovering on the edge of something delicious, vibrating over the tannic architecture, feathered, campfire smoke, fennel, blackberry, liquorice and crushed peonies, and the bitter fennel and slate scrape, dense, contrast of textures and flavours like only truly great wines can do, a reflection of skilful construction. A gorgeous wine, slowly stretching out in the palate, 65% new oak for ageing.- Jane Anson

97 Points! Tasted a few months after it was bottled, the Ornellaia 2022 Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia will be coming to market in March 2025. The blend is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 10% Petit Verdot. The wine sees 18 months of aging with up to 70% new oak, but the trick, proprietor Lamberto Frescobaldi tells me, is drawing from a large group of coopers with different toast levels and forests. "I don't want to make a wine of any one tonnellerie," he says. The oak element is crucial to the identity of this wine that reveals dark fruit, blackberry, sweet spice and cinnamon. Most of the vines were planted in the 1980s, and the average age of the plants is over 20 years old. Fruit comes from many parcels, including Bellaria, Bellaria Nuova, Bellaria Alta, Pero, Fosso, Vigna Vecchia and Stallina. Indeed, some 80 wines are made before final blending. The 2022 vintage will be remembered for its full-bodied appeal, concentrated fruit and generous oak renderings. Petit Verdot plays a slightly larger role in this vintage and was one of the surprise hits of 2022. It serves to elongate the wine and adds to its length. The wine's abundant fruit weight cedes to elegantly integrated tannins. This vintage will appeal to die-hard Ornellaia enthusiasts. - Monica Larner, robertparker.com

99 Points! The 2021 RunRig is an impossibly bright and vibrant wine, with intense power and structure to match the impermeable fruit. Not much more can be said of this wine other than that it came from a magnificent vintage that experienced healthy winter rains in the lead up to the growing season and dry conditions throughout the growing season. The wines have been lauded, and in the case of a wine like this, it is evident why. Like the 2018 vintage, you could drink this anytime, but one would counsel patience. - Erin Larkin, robertparker.com, September 20025

99 Points! The 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Black Label flirts with perfection, with gorgeous graphite, blueberry and blackberry fruit and a full-bodied mouthfeel. The wine is light on its feet for such massive extraction. With not a hard edge to be found, this is truly brilliant winemaking from a great terroir. This is long, rich powerful and certainly seems to have 30 years of upside. Forget it for five years and drink it over the following 30+ years. - Robert Parker, robertparker.com

100 Points! A blend of 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, and 4% Petit Verdot, the 2019 La Joie is deep garnet-purple in color. It has a wonderfully flashy and flamboyant nose of blackcurrant cordial, redcurrant jelly, plum preserves, and potpourri with hints of chocolate mint, tilled soil, chalk dust, and forest floor. The medium to full-bodied palate is very taut and muscular with tons of bright, crunchy black fruits and wonderful tension, finishing with tons of earthy nuances. - Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, TheWineIndependent

99 Points! Composed of 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, and the remainder of Petit Verdot, the 2019 La Joie is compact and unfolds more slowly in the glass. The nose is rich with graphite, sage oil, and black plum. The palate is full of kirsch, fresh leather, currant, and tobacco, with fine tannins that go for ages, along with the fruit and well-balanced acidity. - Jeb Dunnuck

99 Points! A true wow wine, the deep, concentrated 2016 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Les Hauts-Lieux (there's 20% Mourvèdre) offers awesome notes of blackcurrants, smoked meats, graphite, crushed rocks, and licorice. Extraordinarily concentrated, perfectly balanced, structured, and long, it's another sensational wine from this estate. - Jeb Dunnuck

99 Points! A great masterpiece of finesse. It’s hard to adequately describe the beauty of this dry riesling that marries breathtaking stone fruit aromas with an incredible freshness to create an overwhelmingly elegant and cool whole. Let yourself sink into the deep well of its staggering minerality at the almost endless finish. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drink or hold. - JamesSuckling.com

97 Points! The 2022 Brand Turckheim Riesling is very clear, bright and generous on the finely flinty (or petrichor) nose that indicates ripe and elegant fruit intertwined with cooler herbal and vegetal notes. Round, generous yet also very mineral and tensioned on the palate, with fine yet palatable tannins, this is another powerful and structured Riesling, yet it is finer than the Wineck-Schlossberg. It's bone dry yet rich and very long. The yield was 45 hectoliters per hectare. 13.66% alcohol. Natural cork. - Stephan Reinhardt, robertparker.com

99 Points! The late-budding and rather late-ripening Clos Saint-Urbain, in the very south of Alsace, meets the very warm and solar 2022 vintage in this wine. What a thrilling setting this is, the more so since August and September brought rather cooler conditions to this cooler but, due to its dark soils and stony terraces in summer, nevertheless warm terroir of the Rangen. Indeed, the pH level was rather low in 2022 (at 3.1) and caused a dry and tense Riesling that doesn't at all show the characteristics of the Rieslings around Turckheim or elsewhere in Alsace. The 2022 Clos Saint-Urbain Rangen de Thann Riesling opens very clear, pure, saline/iodine-inflected and stony on the flinty or smoky nose that represents the volcanic terroir of the clos perfectly or, as Olivier Humbrecht puts it, "Like a volcano fart." Powerful, rich and saline on the palate, this is a dense, highly complex and energetic Saint-Urbain that somehow combines the purity of Dönnhoff's Hermannshöhle with the concentration, power and mineral complexity of the magnesium-rich Rangen. The finish is very intense, dense and aromatic as well as salivating, with a great mix of tannins, saline acidity and perfectly ripe (apricot) fruit. Pressed slowly over 14 hours, this is one of the, if not THE, finest Rangen I have tasted from Zind-Humbrecht. (Loyal readers know that I had them all a year ago.) The 2022 comes in with 12.8% alcohol and is a wine to keep for many years. - Stephan Reinhardt, robertparkercom