JAMES SUCKLING TASTES DANA ESTATES’ 2018 WINES

We already know that the 2018 vintage is a winner in Napa Valley and on April 8 James tasted a handful of wines from Dana Estates, one of the cult wine producers of the region, while interviewing winemaker Chris Cooney over Zoom. James found the wines to be some of the best he has rated so far from 2018. And the two single-vineyard wines, Helms Vineyard and Lotus Vineyard, showed incredible depth and intensity with fantastically strong yet polished, fine tannins that gave the wine form and beauty. They didn’t produce a wine from Hershey Vineyard in 2018 due to some concerns of smoke from fires north of Napa that had settled in their highest vineyards in Howell Mountain.“It was a vintage with this combination of almost perfect heat and still being a cooler vintage and the wines expressed that,” said Cooney. “They are wines that have a little more energy and those secondary notes that you don’t see for cabernet sauvignons. They had left layers to the wines … my favorite part about the wines are that they have such bright acidity … they are a touch more approachable than 2016 and 2017.”See the wines notes below.Dana Estates Napa Valley Lotus Vineyard 2018Dana Estates Napa Valley Rutherford Helms Vineyard 2018Dana Estates Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Onda 2018Dana Estates Napa Valley Howell Mountain Hershey Vineyard White 2018The video interview is available at https://www.jamessuckling.com/videos/video-james-suckling-tastes-dana-estates-2018-wines/

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This is the podcast of James Suckling, international wine critic with 40 years of experience tasting, critiquing and loving wine! We focus on the great wines of the world including Italy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Australia, New Zealand, California, Chile, and Argentina, but are always open to and looking for surprises. We taste and review thousands of wines each year - 25,000 in 2019 alone! - and meet hundreds of the world's best winemakers along that journey. That's where this podcast comes in - a place to access my conversations with these titans of the wine world, and also my own tasting team as we travel the world to taste amazing wines. I hope you enjoy these podcasts - head to jamessuckling.com for even more reports, videos and articles about how to enjoy wine.