Our latest issue has just posted, and with it, 19 articles and over 4,500 wines reviewed and featuring some serious heavy-hitters from around the globe.
Headlining our end of April issue is, as always, our comprehensive Bordeaux En Primeur coverage. Editor-in-chief Lisa Perrotti-Brown seizes the Bordeaux baton this year, immersing herself in the 2017 vintage over two separate trips to the region this spring, spending nearly a month in total, discussing, tasting, re-tasting and getting the story behind the story of this incredibly complex and varied vintage. Titled The Vintage Divergence, the report contains more than 500 tasting notes and in-depth commentary on the 2017 growing season and winemaking, featuring insightful conclusions with regard to the overall quality of the vintage. For those with a sweet tooth, there is a separate 2017 Sauternes report: A Small but Beautiful Harvest. With such a divergent and inconsistent vintage with pockets of wines at the pinnacles of greatness being released this year, each of these articles is a must-read for anyone with an interest in purchasing Bordeaux futures.
As for new and upcoming releases out of California, we’ve got over 600 wine reviews from Santa Barbara County and over 600 more from Sonoma County. As this is his debut report on California’s Santa Barbara County for The Wine Advocate, William Kelley has provided a detailed breakdown of the extraordinary qualities he sought and found (or didn’t) while tasting the hundreds of wines for this report. There’s also handy rankings of wines in a few very clever and very useful categories, such as top values and top new releases from emerging labels. Plus, we’ve got an absolute bevy of great wines from Sonoma County—and that’s only Part One of our Sonoma coverage this year. And from over the Mayacamas in Napa Valley, we’re featuring a dedicated report on the new Screaming Eagle releases, including a mini-vertical of Second Flight/The Flight.
Meanwhile, Spain reviewer Luis Gutiérrez has taken a Deep Dive into Priorat and has reviews of almost 350 wines from the region to offer plus many highly informative producer profiles. If that’s not enough, he’s also devoted a dedicated report to covering the best-of-the-rest of Cataluña, with 221 wine reviews featuring the crème de la crème of this area.
We’re not finished with our coverage of new European wine releases yet—not by a long chalk. We’re talking 450 reviews of freshly bottled 2015 Burgundies, 654 wine reviews from the Mosel, 166 reviews of Piedmont wines and 508 reviews of the no-longer-twinned regions of Languedoc and Roussillon. Wait, did we mention the vertical of Coche-Dury Corton Charlemagne?
But, if all that isn’t exotic enough to wet your whistle, Liwen Hao is dishing up a collection of incredible Sakes, and of course, you can count on our reviewer of the esoteric, Mark Squires, to dazzle you with something you’ve never heard of from The Balkans, Santorini, Israel and Lebanonor a truly out-there place called “New York.”
Bottoms up!
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