This medium ruby colored Pinot Noir opens with a boysenberry and black cherry bouquet with hints of moist peat moss, wild mushrooms and black plum. On the palate, this wine is medium bodied, nicely balanced and soft. The flavor profile is a tasty crushed stone, tart cherry and toasted oak blend with notes of red plum. We also detected hints of dried herbs. The finish is dry and drifts away nicely. The Panel would pair this Pinot with roasted quail with Pinot Noir sauce or with cast iron pan-roasted chicken breasts.

This pale straw-colored Sauvignon Blanc opens with a lemon-lime and mild yellow grapefruit bouquet with hints of honeydew melon. On the palate, this wine is light plus bodied, nicely balanced, pretty and delicate. The flavor profile is a gentle grapefruit and mild stony minerality blend with hints of lime, green apple and white pepper. The finish is dry and pleasantly refreshing. The Panel would pair this Sauvignon Blanc with fried walleye or sushi.

Soft and creamy, with an appealing touch of butterscotch pudding to compliment the peach and citrus flavors, which are smooth and juicy on the finish.

The 2020 Château Lassegue is another brilliant Saint-Emilion in the making. Offering a full-bodied, rich, textured, and at the same time pure and precise style on the palate, it has classic notes of ripe black cherries, charcoal, crushed stone, and truffly earth. Emerging from the home estate of Pierre Seillan, who’s the force behind the Verite wines in Sonoma, this beautiful 2020 is going to require just 2-4 years of bottle age yet keep for 15+.

This has a bready, buttery nose, as well as ripe peach and pear fruit. The palate is smooth with nice balance, showing some spicy framing to the soft fruit.

This versatile Rose from KJ would be good to have on hand for thewarm weather. It is a medium salmon color, and has a complex bouquet whichincludes watermelon, peach, strawberry, wet stone and white florals. On thepalate, it is medium bodied, has medium acidity, is balanced, fresh and quitequaffable. There are flavors of green apple, nectarine, strawberry, stonyminerality and some hints of ruby grapefruit and red berry. The finish is dry andcitrusy and lasts a long time. In addition to being a good deck sipper, it wouldpair with crispy fish tacos or Thai chicken and watermelon salad with a citrus vinaigrette.

Pale yellow-gold in color, this wine smells of buttered popcorn, pineapple, and lemon curd. In the mouth, bright lemon curd flavors mix with pineapple and cold cream, with pretty white floral notes lingering with a faint woody flavor through the finish. Excellent acidity keeps the mouth watering as the wine lingers for a long time. Intense and ripe, but with enough brightness to balance its fruit. This is a new bottling for the Capensis label, consisting of fruit sourced from two mountain vineyards – the estate Fijnbosch vineyard and the neighboring Nooitgedacht vineyard, ranging in elevation from 940-1730 feet above sea level.

You are going to love this 2020 regular label that is so fresh and juicy with blood, red cherry, and a lovely earthy forest floor undercurrent that it is anything but regular. Wow, just delicious. The estate pinot is made with a mix of vineyards: Sexton, Applejack, Primavera, and Tarraford, harvested between February and April. The average yields were lower across all the pinot blocks thanks to tighter and smaller bunches, all set off by wonderful natural acidity. The fruit is hand picked, chilled and cold soaked over four days before it warms to a wild ferment in small vessels, both stainless steel and open oak vats. About 40 percent of the fruit goes in the whole bunch, and it is all matured in French oak, 10% new, for eight months in a mix of 225-litre barriques and 4000-litre oak vats. The winery suggests handmade pappardelle and shredded confit duck leg and arugula, and I say bring it on.

Incredible colour, just a few pay grades up from rose. So bright and vibrant to look at. All raised in ceramic eggs, 101 days on skins, righteous work with grenache.Rose hip tea, lipstick, cherry and dried herb scents. So pure, shimmering, silky and yet wrapped in a web of ultra fine, wet stone tannins. Magnificent texture. Purity, drive, vibrancy, a beautiful lightweight yet detailed wine of incredible energy and poise. So delicious. So very, very good. World beating stuff. Benchmark.

Blackberry, ripe raspberry, sarsaparilla, spicy, with some sweet sawn wood top notes (though nothing overt, I might add). Powerful and firm, dusty and slightly rusty/ferrous tannin, chamomile tea mouth-perfume, maybe even a cola-nut exotic character in the mix, long and shapely, with Barolo-esque tannin to close. Feels long term. Outstanding.

Spice, fresh raspberry, sage and dried mint and flowers. Crisp with a fresh crunch of pomegranate, slightly peppery, cool and perfumed, stony almost concrete dust tannin, flesh and succulence, with high cheekbones and fine tailoring. Love the cranberry dryness and fine grip of dusty tannin on a long raspberry sorbet finish. Beautiful expression of Grenache.

Ironheart. An excellent name for such an iodine-laced and ferrous wine.Dried mint, sage, iodine, blackberry, spice. The region is stamped firmly on this wine. It picks up on the palate, with deep ferrous tannin, plenty more of that inky and sizzled sage leaf character, deep black fruit, menthol, bacon bone and black olive flavour, furry feel and a powerful finish of fennel and sage sausage. It offers a distinctive flavour profile, and it’s a curious wine in a way, high quality, but kind of overt.

Honey drizzled corn flakes, aniseed and fresh mint, orange and peach juice, a dusting of spice. Lovely chew and grip, a dried flower mouth-perfume, distinct umami almost teriyaki chicken flavour, fresh feel to acidity, even though it’s a wine of bold shape and scale, dry and briney to close. So much interest and things to explore here, as it rolls around the mouth. Excellent.

Fragrant, with scents of candle wax, faint honeycomb, ginger, preserved lemon, jasmine. Lovely stuff. Waxy texture, slippery finish, long and persistent and complex. A feast of stone fruit flavours, ginger-lemon tea, green herbs and salted cashew nuts. Excellent. Complex, medium weight white.

Pale garnet colour. Sappy, sultry, slate-like tannin hewn red of just shy of medium weight. Very fragrant, rose water, maraschino cherry, pot pourri. Beautiful perfume. Flavours are in the cherry-cranberry zone, those tannins though… and general sense of vitality and freshness. Excellent wine here. Structure, complexity, excellence.

Garnet coloured with black rim. Looks deep and moody. Wood spice, clove, cedar, darker berries, liquorice, brined olive notes. Trim and taut, controlled and long, serious feeling wine of depth and complexity, seasoned well in a style that favours a bit of mocha-spice oak presence. It fits the premium bill, needs some time, will mature well. Serious, spicy, dark fruited grenache with tension and drive.

Deep purple-black colored, the 2020 Lassegue needs a little swirling to begin, to unlock bright, cheery scents of fresh blackberries, black raspberries and redcurrants, plus hints of black cherry preserves, charcoal, woodsmoke and underbrush with a waft of tapenade. The medium to full-bodied palate has a firm structure of ripe, rounded tannins and just enough freshness to support the generous black fruits, finishing long and earthy.

Spicy, curry leaf and black fruits, coffee and tobacco. Medium to full-bodied, again quite savoury and spicy, a little ferrous, fresh blackberry and tobacco, slightly too brisk lemony acidity, though does have energy, and a firm finish of olive leaf and black fruit.

From across the valley, on Howell Mountain, there’s the 2017 La Jota Merlot, which is dark and dense, with black fruit, anise, cedar and spice. It’s a big wine, but it’s still light on its feet, with good freshness.

The 2016 Mt. Brave Merlot comes from Mt. Veeder, above the west side of the valley. The wine displays lively red fruit, baking spices, a savory note of cedar and firm but approachable tannins on its long finish.

Another beautifully limpid and glossy en primeur sample with a radiant and almost fluorescent pink/lilac rim. Open, expressive and fragrantly fresh on the nose with a lovely combination of deep purple flowers (peonies perhaps), blue and purple berry and stone fruit and a traditional classroom full of pencil shavings (if that is the appropriate collective noun!).Bright, light, aerial and almost gravity-defying on the palate despite the considerable density and intensity of the fruit, this is one of those deceptively powerful wines because of the sheer quality and compactness of the grain of the tannins. There has been a sharp and steep progression at Lassègue in recent vintages and this is perhaps their best yet. Exquisitely joyous and exquisitely complete.

Women of Wine: The Best Wines From Today's Female WinemakersKate Ayres of Oregon's Penner-Ash is all about uniquely expressive styles of Oregon Pinot Noir. The Penner-Ash Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2018 is sourced from six regions, resulting in a complex yet balanced bottle full of strawberry jam and ripe cherry as well as plum and peppercorns.