2024 has seen a plethora of highlights, many of these associated with trips abroad and awesome tastings but also my heading back into the auction houses to buy up ‘dead men’s wine’.
Natalie Dean celebrating her 30th with 1994 Clos des Papes
Old parcels of dry Huet, Trimbach, northern and southern Rhône, parcels of Claret and Burgundy have led to much merriment in the Dean household, as I've always found auctions a reliable way of acquiring aged wines in good condition and also ‘birth-year wines’ – of which plenty were required in 2024.
First, two significant birthdays at home – a 1964 Pio Cesare Barolo did the trick for the missus and a 1994 Clos des Papes for my eldest. The ’64 was as astonishingly beautiful and vivacious as the recipient – a core of acidity giving it impressive balance (the wine that is!) – while the Rhône proves that ageing wine successfully is all about getting the right producer and year, particularly in a region which has its fair share of over-extraction.
Thomas Dean with his birth year wine - and yes he is a marathon runner!
A 1986 Comtesse De Lalande for my nephew was also à point– which three of us drank in almost silent contemplation one evening in the summer, wonderful evolution and layers revealing themselves in the glass over time. The neighbours would have been rolling in the aisles if they could have heard our serious bollox.
Perfect pairings
Drinking aged wines, direct from the estate, tasted alongside new releases is one of the many privileges of being a wine writer, of course, and last year once again had a number of standout verticals and pairings.
Two Brunello di Montalcino verticals are noteworthy – one from Poggio di Sotto where the 2010, 2015 and 2018 shone out of a 8-vintage flight.
Biondi-Santi also chose to show the glorious 2010 and 1988 La Storica wines to counterpoint its new 2018 Brunello at the renovated Pavyllon Four Seasons in London.
Vega-Sicilia used the 2004 Unico vintage to partner the new 2014 Unico at a spectacular dinner in the National Gallery. Bollinger launched the 2015 La Grande Année alongside the 1988 at a launch in central Paris
while Clos des Lambrays opened the massively contrasting 1937 and 1938 wines to help launch its 2022 Grand Cru.
I’m such a fan of tastings where the importer asks producers to bring along a library bottle to showcase where the new releases might end up.
Armit does this particularly well with one of the highlights of its portfolio tasting being Elena Walch’s Beyond the Clouds, the pair of which shone with the 2011 showing how the new 2015 release will develop its nutty/dried quince profile.
One of the year’s more ambitious tastings was hosted by the Cathiards to blind-taste its recent Napa wines from Cathiard Vineyard alongside 8 truly iconic Californian wines including Screaming Eagle, Dominus and Scarecrow – wines that some of us rarely get an opportunity to taste.
Then there were the just magnificent pairings – drinking not tasting – of Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey’s 2017 Chassagne Montrachet Les Chenevottes alongside Sauzet’s 2018 Puligny Montrachet Champ-Gain from magnum. An exercise in terroir definition and pure enjoyment, held in the courtyard of the Hospices de Beaune before an unforgettable dinner (more of which later).
The dinner wines for the final night of Bike to Care - tasting pretty good after 200km of cycling
And last, but not least, four vintages of Gravner’s Ribolla Gialla at the estate – each one with their own characteristics, changing in the glass with and without food – 2010 probably my favourite. A highlight of the year.
I have a healthy smattering of Italian wines in my pick of 2024. Why? The wines warrant it and the Italian-based PRs are doing a truly cracking job, especially in the absence (or because of?) a lack of a generic Italian wine body. Take a bow Thurner PR, Well Com and Studio Cru for bringing the wines and winemakers to us and getting us out there in such imaginative ways.
Top 10 wines of the year
Enough prattling Dean, onto the main course… picking my wines of the year.
Il Marroneto, Brunello d Montalcino, 2019
Armit’s MD Brett Fleming had been banging onto me all year about this wine so it could easily have disappointed but did it heck – this is the real deal. A suave, polished Brunello with astounding purity of fruit and an instant likeability. There’s a transparency to the wine that you see with other wines in this vintage, then lifted wafts of cherry, cedar, fresh flowers, spice, a medium-to full body with decent backbone and integrated tannins, orange zest, gorgeous flavours. Stunning.
Giodo, Brunello di Montalcino, 2019
2019 is some year for Brunello and the site-specificity of this glorious ‘new’ estate shines through in this jaw-dropping 100-pointer. It has the elegance and finesse I found in the 2010 Poggio di Sotto when it was first released and I similarly bought a 6-pack of the Giodo as soon as the plane hit the tarmac on my return from Tuscany which isn’t something I do very often any more.
Collezione Privata Chardonnay, Isole e Olena 2022
Italian whites go from strength to strength and this beauty, formerly labelled Collezione de Marchi, is in a great place here. Tasted alongside the 2016 at the River Café earlier in the year with food and also solus without food at the estate, it’s a banging blend of five Burgundy clones that are grown on the North-East facing slopes 400m up, meaning that the vines never get too hot or parched. There is terrific balance here between the rich, nutty, buttery notes from the wine's partial malolactic fermentation and fresh, mineral structure. Fresh, clear, tense, complex… this is an outstanding Chardonnay and one of Italy's finest examples.
Bianco Sivi, Gravner, 2009
There are arguably 'better' or more complex wines in Gravner's portfolio but this 100% Pinot Grigio (which can't be labelled as such because legislation dictates that if it's skin-aged it can't be a PG) took my breath away for the sheer audacity and class. 3-4 months on the skins, back into qvevri and then aged for six years, it looks and feels like a light red wine - russet-brown, savoury, rounded - it eschews any pigeon-hole you try to fit it in. Truly one of a kind and so, so drinkable, even at 15.5% abv. If this was served blind in a Masters of Wine exam I’m not sure the pass mark would be very high. It’s “Pinot Grigio Jim but not as we know it”.
La Cosa Dulce – The Thing, Bodegas y Vinedos Tejero, 2014
The term ‘bottle variation’ was made for this wonderfully individual sweet wine made from 100% Moscatel de Alejandría grown on a high-altitude site near Valladolid. 50% is botrytised fruit, hung to dry on the winemaker’s washing line (apparently). Whole-bunch pressed and then fermented in steel the result looks like home brew but is a glorious mix of flavours and works like a dream with complex desserts. Discovered this at Heft in the Lake District thanks to the marvelous somm there @thenorthernboywhodrinks – well worth following him if you don’t already.
Cuvée Oliver Minkley, Breaky Bottom, 2011
I’ve had some cracking fizz over the year. A good discovery was Champagne Girard-Bonnet A mi-chemin which was drank as an aperitif at a lunch in a Tuscan enotica. I really enjoyed Alfred Gratien Cuvée Paradis 2015, ‘new kid on the block’ Réserve de la Terre, Champagne Telmont NV a terrific terroir-driven cuvée, while best premium Champagne was undoubtedly La Grande Siècle No.26 from Laurent Perrier.
But the wine that was in the best sweet spot was Cuvée Oliver Minkley from English wine pioneer Peter Hall, a small batch blend of Chardonnay (60%), Seyval Blanc (30%) and Pinots Noir and Meunier (5% each) that had the chops of a super-premium Champagne (think £150+) but still the heart of the best possible English sparkling wine – fine tension from the Seyval, apple notes and good breadth and depth from the aged Pinots. You can still buy this for about £65 retail and as such it is a tremendous bargain at that.
We had this as the first wine served blind in our wine club – four days of outstanding wine held in France every year with many, many priceless bottles opened – and at the end we all pretty much agreed that Cuvée Oliver Minkley was the wine of the event.
Meursault-Porusots Premier Cru, Domaine des Comtes Lafon 2014
This wine was served as one in a phenomenal line-up of Burgundies on the final night dinner of the Bike to Care 2024 charity ride in Beaune. As with all great wine line-ups you can never predict exactly how a wine is going to show on the night - one of the joys of drinking flights like this. There were no duffers, obviously, but this Premier Cru was off the scale, a good length ahead of the following wines. Rich florals, orchard fruit, great density – everything, everywhere, all at once. There are arguably 'better' cuvées from Lafon but that was immaterial on the night because this was perfect white Burgundy beyond compare.
Clos Stegasta Rosé 2022, T-OINOS
This is a new, terroir-driven rosé from the windy island of Tinos that is right up there with the very best. A blend of 35% Assyrtiko 35% Mavrotragano 20% Avgoustiatis and 10% Malagousia, direct pressed and then aged on lees for six months. The Assyrtiko brings the aromatic profile while the Malagousia gives floral notes, saltiness and a charge of mineral.
Brilliant light to medium pink with saffron highlights – intense and extremely complex, you detect flowering wild herbs, yellow stone fruit, dried orange peel, watermelon, quince and concentrated fruit preserve; In the mouth you feel the extra lees-ageing, there’s a plumpness here, oleaginous, medium weight, beautifully poised with a yin and yang sweet/ sour playfulness. Impressive and interesting to see how this hangs together over the years.
Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon, Vasse Felix 1985
Lunch with Virginia Willcock is always going to be a blast and so it proved when she was in London to show off the latest releases from this Margaret River-based pioneer. Her belief is that there is no ‘gap’ in Cabernet Sauvignon, that the Bordelais historically tried to ‘fill’ with Merlot; she thinks that the clones she works with and the unique terroir of Margaret River can produce stunning Cab Sauv like this – with freshness, round, approachable tannins and nicely hidden structure. In fact, there are a lot of aged Bordeauxs that would be happy to be as good as this 1985, a wine that won the World Trade Fair when it debuted in 1987 and is still going strong as this very rare bottle proved. It offered so much – sweet, rich aged fruit, dried flowers, mint, blood, ginger nut – the acidity holding it together perfectly.
#22 Saperavi, Solomnishvili 2018
Visiting Giorgi Solomnishvili in the Khaketi wine region of Georgia was an extraordinary event – he is one of the country's top vignerons making small batch Saperavi in a variety of styles but with each wine he seems to find a freshness and elegance in the grape that very few winemakers seem to locate. The fruit spends five months in qvevri (with some stems), then 18 months in French oak. The wine is as opaque, rich and earthy as you might expect but has a softness of touch and almost ethereal core of freshness that you might not be expecting. Quite disarming and brilliant winemaking. It's a steal at the price.
So thanks to all the winemakers, importers, fellow hacks and PRs who made 2024 such a memorable year. Here's to many more in 2025. Cheers!
One last thing, my nephew queried where I had secured the 1986 Comtesse De Lalande from after seeing this clip from the majestic Sopranos. Same vintage and everything! Scroll to 2' 58" if you're strapped for time.....
