Look for fresh, bright fruit, baked apples, tangerine, and orange. The palate is juicy, with Asian pear, key lime, and pineapple, with a saline underside. The alcohol tips out at a modest 13.5%, making it food friendly and easy to sip. The Monterey AVA consists of a long valley stretching from the uniquely cold Monterey Bay to the far Southeast reaches of the Salinas Valley. An ever present breeze and maritime influence cool vast expanses of rolling vineyards. The fruit comes off multiple sites, including the Gravelstone and Clark estate vineyards. 2022 was mostly a dream season with a wet start to winter and early rainfalls helping to ease drought conditions. Budbreak and early season growth avoided frost problems seen elsewhere with a regular dry season before a late heat spike forced a quick harvest starting September 20. The fruit is 90% barrel fermented, in a 70/30 mix of French and American oak barrels for 5-6 months, including 16% new oak.

Much like 2021, ’22 is unabashedly Napa with a rich, honeyed pineapple nose flecked with oranges and wood spice. The palate continues themes with warm caramel, pineapple, and lemon curd. Don’t get me wrong, the wine is well-made and has a large audience, but it is a bit old school. Lobster is a fine match as are cream cheese and smoked salmon with a dab of caviar, or pan-seared scallops in white wine. The wine is 78% barrel fermented in 43% new French oak barrels before aging in a 78/22 spread of oak and stainless steel for 9 months.

This wine is the child of the cool Pacific breezes that sweep across the Monterey Peninsula in the early to mid-afternoon. By late afternoon, the temperature can fall by 15 degrees, and the wind can be so fierce it hinders photosynthesis, extending the growing season. The temperatures can fall into the 50s at night while the winds blow unrelentingly. By sunrise, all is still, the vineyards sit in fog, and low clouds obscure the mountains before the cycle repeats in the late morning. The result is a refreshing sauvignon with a lemony base, blood orange, and grapefruit. It is becoming a much more serious sauvignon. Ready to drink with a variety of fresh seafood.

KJ has always been about cool coastal fruit, and this wine has been splattered with it despite its California moniker. It's been getting skinnier, dropping a bit of tropical fruit sweetness for a fresher, cooler underside of citrus and grapefruit in the last few versions. In 2022, the melon, lemongrass, grapefruit, and honeysuckle led with a hint of minerality in the back end. Soft, round, and easy sipping, this is one to drink this spring and summer. Pleasantly full and fresh, making for an excellent in-between style.

This bottling from an iconic vineyard begins with rich aromas of black cherry, creamy mace spice and a hint of loamy soil. The palate is very tense, giving a tannic, acidwashed balance to the ripe cherry, raspberry and lemon peel flavors, with a kick of white pepper on the finish.

This wine has a fuller body and more obvious extract than its elegant King's Wood sibling. Firmer tannins, too. There are heady aromas of violets, licorice, charcuterie and boysenberries. There is a hint of reduction and barrel-ferment smokiness marking the mid-palate, but this is a classy, polished shiraz with immense flavors and personality. It is clearly built for the mid-term cellar. In '22 this shiraz may well be the superior variety from this site. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drinkable now, but best from 2027.

The leading release of Pinot Noir from Giant Steps in this vintage is the 2022 Pinot Noir Primavera Vineyard. Beautifully perfumed, it teases as it opens up with subtle aromas of potpourri, fennel seed, dark cherry and warm earth. Elegant and ethereal, it delivers wild and intriguing flavors of strawberry, aged meats and spice, with herbal undertones. The finish exceptional and promises to offer plenty more with time in the cellar.

The most complete of the Giant Steps Chardonnay this vintage, the 2022 Chardonnay Sexton Vineyard, from a lower north facing slope, offers up a rich core of powerful nectarine and spiced pear lifted by French nougat and gentle oak spice. It displays an excellent volume of flavor, with a fresh line of acidity and superb balance- a hallmark of a long, silky and stunning finish.

Deep and bright red-purple colour; the bouquet has a patina of meaty reduction at first, then terracotta earthiness, nicely ripe berry and plum aromas with it. The wine is intense and powerful, with a good backing of firm tannins which harmonise well, the finish long and balanced. Good now and has potential for the future.

Barbara Banke, like her late husband, Jess Jackson, left law to focus on building their vast vineyard estate, with a side-hustle in thoroughbred race horses. Maggy Hawk was one of those horses, as well as a property Banke purchased in 1994 with the last legal fees she collected before retiring from the profession. The Jackson Family team planted the site in 2000, 58 acres of vines in the far northwestern corner of the Anderson Valley. Sarah Wuethrich has made the wines since 2017, after seven years as assistant winemaker to Well Guthrie at Copain. Afleet is one of four selections from the property, a delicate wild-mountain-strawberry essence in the scent, fat and fleshy in the finish as its darker cherry scents deepen and lengthen out. There’s beautiful earthiness integrated into the fruit, leaving a sense of refinement. What pinot should be. The wine feels healthy and ready to cellar. (150 cases)

This is not a bottling offered every year. Lush ripe raspberry, sweet black plums, black molasses, zesty orange blossoms on the nose. The fruit is tart wild strawberry, cherry cola, black tea, orange vanilla cream on the palate rolling into mineral, acidity and a mouthwatering finish. Hold or drink 2024–2030.

Supple, black cherry, cranberry-pomegranate, dried potpourri, zesty pink grapefruit on the nose. The fruit on the palate is quince, Bing cherry, red apple skin, black tea and gripping tannins. Hold or drink 2024–2032.

One of the few brands proudly proclaiming ingredients on the bottle, this bottling reflects the stony, rocky nature of Chalone, starting with aromas of crushed rocks, Meyer lemon curd and Asian pear. It’s tightly woven and restrained in that regional style, as lemon rind, almond and light honey take a backseat to the impressively rocky mineral flavors.

Rounded and bold aromas of strawberry, tobacco, black tea and clove kick off the nose to this bottling. The palate showcases a rounded red cherry core with incense, cola, thyme and eucalyptus leaf flavors adding nuance. Firm with tension, and protected by a screwcap. So drink now–2041.

The generously proportioned 2022 Chardonnay Wombat Creek Vineyard delivers rich veins of nicely, focused aromas, with a strong core of hazelnut supported by nectarine and spicy, well integreated oak. Full- bodied and flavorsome, it possesses an underlying firm, drying acidity, topped by gentle stony nuances and subtle smoky tones. A finely tuned and embryonic finish with icing on this cake.

The 2022 Chardonnay Applejack Vineyard is well controlled and elegant as it offers up pristine, focused aromas of grapefruit, pear and gentle florals, backed by just-ripe nectarine and a smoky/flinty edge. Then very tight and fresh, ribbons of chalky acidity provide a vibrant start before building texture and weight. Flavors of citrus and creamed cashew add complexity over a lengthy finish. This is young and built to last.

The Saralee’s Vineyard became La Crema’s home base in 2013, after the Jackson family purchased the property from Richard and Saralee Kunde. The vineyard’s pedigree shows in this supple blend, with mellow spice and the flavor of cantaloupe just coming into ripeness. The wine’s tannins give it the feel of a cotton terry-cloth robe, then it lasts on scents of orchard blossoms and those mouthwatering tannins. For a veal chop. (184 cases)

Rounded pear aromas are cut by sharp apple skin and lime pith elements on the nose of this energetic bottling. The palate is very tightly wound and chalky, with mouthwatering flavors of lime and orange pith.

This is a bold and lush expression very much in line with the Santa Lucia Highlands’ most popular bottlings. Aromas of cherry, chaparral and freshly shaved nutmeg lead from the nose into a palate where leathery tannins float atop cherry candy, star anise and mace flavors.

Bottled under screwcap, this wine’s hint of reduction, gives way to a dark beauty, with its scents of mace, a hint of creosote, black cherry and juicy plum. Its rich middle palate is more than offset by rippling, lively acids, giving, the wine firmness and lift. (460 cases)

This wine transcends the 2020 vintage with its lean, spicy, surround sound that speaks volumes of grenache. Layered, red-fruited and lasting, yes, it has heat, but that warmth is incorporated into the fruit. The tight tannins will relent with carnitas and hominy in a warming posole. Sovereign Wine Imports, Santa Rosa, CA

Matt Revelette gets this fruit from the Jackson family’s estate vineyard in Annapolis, a far-coast site one ridge inland from the Pacific. Coastal freshness gives that fruit a bright strawberry essence, satisfyingly rich, simple and subtle. Oak darkens the fruit toward grilled blackberry flavors in the end, long and ripe. (317 cases)

This is a rooty pinot noir; its cherry fruit comes complete with the stems, while the tannins carry some heat as well as intriguing detail—like the bitter sweetness of carrots. Then the cherry-juice notes freshen on the end. (333 cases)

Cerebral and unforced, the 2022 Pinot Noir Wombat Creek Vineyard emerges from one of the highest- elevation vineyards in the Yarra. It opens slowly to reveal sous bois, cinnamon sugar, fruits of the forest and a nice touch if vanillin oak. Lovely forest floor and sour cherry flavors follow, with touches of wintergreen, gently framed by supple tannins. This is pretty and refined, with room to improve.

Baked berry and plum aromas are spiced in sandalwood and mulling spice on the nose of this appellation cuvée from a rocky part of Monterey. The palate is dense with backed plum, loamy soil and bay leaf flavors.