The most memorable wines of 2023
As I think back on the wines I most enjoyed over the course of the year, I wrestle with the word “best.”
What does it even mean? The best tend to be the most memorable, wines that not only offer great pleasure but perfectly fit the circumstances of their consumption. With that in mind, these bottles stand out as the year’s most memorable.
Cà dei Zago Valdobbiadene Mariarosa Frizzante 2022:
At a recent meal at La Tavernaccia in Rome, a casual trattoria with an excellent wine list, the sommelier suggested this natural, lightly sparkling wine that comes from prosecco territory but bears no resemblance to ordinary prosecco.
Unlike most large prosecco producers, Cà dei Zago farms organically, with special attention to soil health, and makes the wines carefully and conscientiously. It supplements glera, the main prosecco grape, with little-known indigenous varieties, rather than commonly used international grapes like chardonnay. The wine was lively, savory and delicious.
Emrich-schönleber Nahe Monziger Riesling Kabinett 2021:
The classic German kabinett style — lightly sweet, delicate, almost fragile rieslings — was one of my favorites in the 1980s and ’90s. As the climate has warmed, grapes ripen much faster nowadays, and the style has given way to sweeter, richer wines.
But the cool, wet ’21 vintage was a throwback to the years before climate change, and a classic kabinett was possible again. Among a group of exceptional wines I wrote about in March, the Emrich-schönleber stuck with me for its combination of delicacy and intensity.
Enric Soler Improvisació Xarello 2020:
While researching the best places to drink wine in Madrid, I drank this subtle yet sublime white wine at Berria, a handsome, modern wine bar. Enric Soler is a former sommelier who inherited a Catalan vineyard planted in 1945. I always find his wines thrilling, and this was no different. It was textured, saline and charged with energy.
Comando G Sierra de Credos El Tamboril 2018:
Also in Madrid, at La Fisna, a small but wonderful wine bar, I found this exceptional white from Comando G, a producer at the forefront of the vanguard rejuvenating the Spanish wine world. Comando G is better known for its fresh, distinctive reds, but it also makes tiny amounts of this lovely white wine from garnacha gris and garnacha blanca. El Tamboril was beautiful, nutty, saline and sleek, fantastically complex yet still young. It’s a rare bottle to find.
A. Rafanelli Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2018:
I was dining by myself at the bar at Cafe La Haye, a restaurant in Sonoma, California, when I spotted a half-bottle of this wine on the list. Rafanelli is better known for its zinfandels, but its cabernet sauvignons are superb. They are old school, not exactly rustic but rugged and soulful. It was a reminder of how good California cabernet can be without the makeup and polish.
Tiberio Trebbiano d’abruzzo Fonte Canale 2017:
In Carsoli, in Abruzzo, the region in central Italy that extends from the Adriatic to the Apennines, I saw this bottle on the list at L’angolo d’abruzzo. It’s a single-vineyard white made from old vines of trebbiano Abruzzese, a far superior grape with a similar name to the more mundane trebbiano Toscano.
It was lovely, stony and almost salty, a beautiful wine that is one of Italy’s best whites. It will age for years.
Do Ferreiro Rías Baixas Albariño Cepas Vellas 2016:
In Galicia, Spanish winemakers are exploring the potential for complexity and aging of albariño, a wine that is regarded as cheap and easy. Do Ferreiro is a producer who never succumbed to that thinking. It’s always made fascinating age-worthy wines.
This bottle is a perfect example. Cepas Vellas, Gallego for old vines, is an apt term — the Mendez family, which owns Do Ferreiro, estimates the vineyard is 200 years old. The wines last for years, which makes the 2016, consumed in June, awfully young. Still, it was intense, concentrated and textured. It made a lasting impression.
Sandlands Vineyards Sonoma County Trousseau 2014:
Tegan Passalacqua, the winemaker at Turley Wine Cellars, has a personal project, Sandlands Vineyards, in which he seeks out (or purchases) forgotten California vineyards with often obscure grapes. Since Sandlands’ first vintage, in 2009, I’ve bought a few bottles every year, curious to follow its progress.
Trousseau is a grape from the Jura in France, as well as the Douro Valley in Portugal, where it’s called bastardo. This bottle, which I pulled from a forgotten corner of my wine fridge, was wonderful, still fresh and lively, delicate in texture yet full of verve and floral aromas. California trousseau is a niche wine, but whoa, was this good.
Jacky Truchot Clos de la Roche Vielles Vignes 2005:
A small group gathered at Le Coucou in New York in September for a lunch to examine the progress of some 2005 Burgundies. The vintage was critically lauded when the wines were released, but they have often been too robust and burly for my taste.
To me, this bottle, from one of my favorite grand cru vineyards, was the star. It was dense and fruity, befitting a 2005, yet it managed to be precise, complex and almost ethereal at the same time. Jacky Truchot, the vigneron, who retired after this vintage, was known for making subtle, delicate wines, but how does one wine encompass both density and lightness?
Renaissance Sierra Foothills North Yuba Cabernet Sauvignon Première Cuvée 1996:
Renaissance is one of California’s strangest wine stories: A religious cult, the Fellowship of Friends, started this wine business in the Sierra Foothills in the 1970s. By the 1990s, it was making great wines, but things have slid since then. Esther Mobley wrote a great article about Renaissance for The San Francisco Chronicle in 2018.
Somewhere, I acquired a few bottles and held onto this one until last January, when I opened it at a dinner with friends. It was stunning, a touch austere at first but, with air, became more complex and enjoyable. Like the Rafanelli, it was a bottle that ran counter to the oaky, fruity, alcoholic style that prevailed back then, but it stood the test of time.
Château Palmer Margaux 1989:
At that same dinner, I also opened this Bordeaux, which a collector friend had given me some time before. Palmer has always been one of the leading Margaux producers, and today, under its current CEO, Thomas Duroux, it has become one of Bordeaux’s most progressive top estates.
It was magnificent, elegant, lustrous and precise, as is the style of a well-aged Palmer, but with miles to go.