Apologies if someone else posted about this but I haven’t seen anything about this year’s tasting, which was the 2021 vintage. I went to the LA tasting. As usual, they didn’t have as many producers as NY, but whatever.
I’m not going to post a bunch of TNs but overall I liked what I tasted. It was an interesting vintage - early on there was a late frost with a bad fruit set in many places, then cool weather, rain, hot weather mid summer, and then mildew. All in all not the best year for biodynamic producers since a few of them mentioned spraying.
But the wines were pretty good IMHO. In all appellations the ABV hovered around 13%, some wines clocking in at 12.0% and others at 13.5. The producers talked about Merlot not having a great year, but those who were able to harvest it got some pretty nice wines without the ripeness of some other years.
In spite of crap weather, the wines are pretty fresh and enjoyable, they don’t have a lot of astringent and green notes or tough tannins, and they’re largely enjoyable now. I suppose Margaux was my favorite, but there were pretty good wines in all regions.
More interesting however, was the use of amphorae. That seems to be a budding trend as there were a few producers who wanted to talk about those. It coincided with less of an oak signature in many wines - those who were using the amphorae also used older barrels as part of the mix, in some cases only 20% were new barrels.
Kind of a fun vintage. For me anyway.