Taut and focused, with blueberry and currant flavors behind prickly tannins. Finishes with generosity and point.

Firm and focused, with dense blackberry, mineral and pepper flavors that persist against prickly tannins as the finish lingers.

Firm and focused, with juicy blackberry and cherry fruit. Peppery tannins are sprinkled through the open-weave, deftly wrought finish.

Broad and spicy, with nutmeg and paprika overtones to the dark berry flavors, finishing with generosity but not excess weight.

Avant is a modern take on Chardonnay: minimal oak, maximum fruit. This 2015 vintage from vineyards in Monterey County, Santa Barbara County and Mendocino sings. It has aromas of pineapple, green apple, lemon and pear, and flavors of green apple and lemon drop. It’s braced with bright, firm acidity and sleek minerality. I love this 2015 vintage.

Rich, a seamless infusion of oak, juicy flavors and acidity, and when you swallow, the flavors persist. It’s a fuller-bodied wine than Avant. Flavors are intensely tropical: pineapple, mango, papaya, tart green apple with a kiss of oak. So delicious. This wine has been the top-selling Chardonnay in the U.S. for almost 25 years. It was the wine everybody coveted when I first started writing about wine. And it hasn’t changed a bit.

Lavender and buttery citrus make this ripe, sexy chardonnay a winner. Buttery and luscious, like a classic sunshiny Cali chard, balanced by a nice hit of citrus and minerality. Winemaker Marcia Torres Forno starts in the vineyard, using sustainable practices, low yields and a combination of native and cultured yeasts to deliver a mouth-filling chardonnay, nutty and nicely balanced, despite tipping 14.5 percent alcohol.

“No additives were used in the wine’s entire production.” Preservative free. Certified biodynamic. All from a single block. “Whole berries were double-sorted before being lightly broken going into small open-top fermenters.”
Vibrant shiraz. Exuberant. It feels quite bound-up at first but in relatively short time it frees its arms and lets the fruit flow. Blueberries and blackberries with a subtle clovey edge. Simple but ever-so-enjoyable. Another glass. And another. If you know what I mean.

Zeroes in on a rich core of tangerine-laced green apple, melon and subtle spice flavors, ending up as a tasty, one-note effort that is complex within a narrow range.

From the estate plantings, biodynamically farmed, hand picked and sent to winery to natural ferment. It hangs out in tank mostly but some older oak is also applied. It’s a good thing to drink, I reckon. Would love to be on the White House (the Yangarra ‘mansion’) patio drinking this on a summer’s night pre dinner. Feels like a good thing to start an evening with. Subtle, fine, elegant expression of viognier. Has a soft, nutty complexion amongst the faint apricot, ripe apple, peach kisses in flavour. It’s very long, supple, licked at its heels with oatmeal savouriness, finishes with a quick zest of mixed citrus. So very easy to like the calm, even nature of this wine, and flavours are pleasing. Almost like a comfort white.

Certified biodynamic in the vineyard. This has been a bit of a coup from Yangarra, in past. Mourvedre seems to be a forte of winemaker Peter Fraser and team. Sanguine stuff here, bleeds with the variety in perfume, spice, herbs, earth and medium weight. McLaren Vale’s elite. Somewhere between pinot noir and nebbiolo, in a way, this is wildly, highly perfumed, silky textured, just medium weight, fine and slender, fruity yet hedged with savoury-herbal detail. It’s a wine that bolshy red wine lovers will get into for its purple-feeling, ripe fruit and sweet spice, but those who want finesse from their wines will equally enjoy for its sheath of very firm yet feathery tannin and sleek profile. Highest quality tannin. Plenty of life here. Lots to go too. Very good.

Old vine grenache makes up the thrust of this wine. It’s from organically grown (certified) vineyards. McLaren Vale does GSMs very well, I reckon. Let the shiraz play second fiddle to the region’s better red grape variety, I say. It’s a nice thing to drink, easy thing to drink, feels smooth, even and tidy-ish in its components. That being said, oak peeks out a bit in old spice cupboard, pencil shavings and twigginess in perfume and palate, but there’s just about enough dark fruit, Xmas cake dried fruits and spice and earthiness to move things along. Just medium weight, finishes a touch short with smudged dusty tannins. Again, nice drink.

From a series of plots, certified biodynamic. In the past this has been a belter of a wine, if not one of Australia’s best roussanne’s (not faint praise, a great white wine regardless). Something amiss here. Scents show discordant between lemon essence, lemon soap, sandalwood and barley sugar water. The palate is fine, sleek, but again feels like something is awry in lemon drop, sweet fruit flavours, resinous character, then a lack of mid palate, short finish, and a feel like a coarse filter has been applied to strip out something from the wine (not suggesting this, just a feel). The finish has a rustic thing to it, then resinous and slick again. It’s just not quite up to speed, it feels.

Black currant, wild cassis, tart blackberry and smoke. Full-bodied, balanced and complex. A nicely balanced Californian Cabernet. Pair with a pepper steak.

The mountain appellation speaks loudly in this wine, contributing juicy blackberry, tar and leather, all within a forested context of wild truffle and crunchy leaves. Concentrated and robust in body and ripeness, it unwinds slowly in the glass, imparting jolts of black pepper as it goes. —V.B.

This full-bodied, concentrated wine shows plenty of power in its bringing together of the variety with smaller percentages of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. With a huge presence on the palate that lingers and stays in one's brain, it shows a reductive quality of toasted oak along with black pepper, bark and leather saddle,. It's a wine to enjoy from a giant leather chaise, if possible.

Alcance is a member of Vigno (Vignadores del Carignan), a group of growers working together to rescue and promote the heritage of old, dry-farmed carignan vines in Maule. This wine comes from Cauquenes, where it grows in granitic soils. It’s an extracted, voluptuous take on the grape, with smoky notes of oak crowding into the midst of all the ripe red fruit, exotic spice and scents of fresh flowers. It is rustic and delicious, needing roasted lamb to match its tremendous power, or time in your cellar to tame it.

Part of Jackson Family Wines, based in Santa Rosa, California, Alcance is an estate in the Maule Valley and Jess Jackson's team was the first from outside Chile to explore the potential of that region post-Pinochet, in the early 1990's. JFW's lead winemaker, Randy Ullom, works with Andrés Sánchez of Gillmore Wines, producing this from 10-year-old vines on granitic soils. It's charming in its crunchy, refreshing red fruit that sails on with sweet spices, tightening up in a firm, more circumspect finish. Pour it with something meaty.

A mineral-driven white, this is waxy and lemony on the palate. Light bodied, crisp and vibrant, it doesn’t hold back on complexity, weaving a lengthy story of perfumed near-perfection.

Unusually graceful and elegant despite full body and dense tannins, this wine has lush, rich fruit flavors like blackberry compote, plus clove and black pepper accents. It's an outstanding example of how attractive the variety can be, and no surprise considering its long history in Mendocino County.

From ten-year-old vines planted in the granitic soils of San Francisco Vineyard, this carmenère balances its scents of herbs and spices with an extra degree of acidity that makes it so drinkable, and perfect for lamb chops. The tight, pleasantly rustic tannins will do the rest. Chill it down to enhance the red fruit flavors that shine in the background.

This crisp and lengthy vineyard-designate shows a depth of earth and rose petals against baked plum, orange zest and rhubarb. Mouthfilling acidity provides a freshness on the palate that persists through a long, spicy finish.

Lush and vibrantly balanced, this wine is marked by juicy layers of blueberry, huckleberry and spicy cola and clove. Velvety-smooth on the palate, it's a satisfying, medium-bodied effort that effectively shows the beauty of the site and the vintage.

From a site on the edges of Santa Rosa, this vineyard-designate shows a wealth of baked strawberry and is noteworthy for its vibrantly fruity aromatics. Ripe, velvety and lush on the palate, it delivers sensually and deliciously, with a lasting imprint of cola spice on the finish.

This wine is made in decent quantities, enough to hopefully find, and that's good news, given its quality for the price. Juicy, spicy and just the right amount of herbal, it has sizzling acidity that livens and refreshens the palate, dotted in chocolate-covered cherry, plum and clove.