hors Bordeaux 2025: North and South America and China tasting notes

db’s Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay assesses the wines being released during of the 2025 spring hors Bordeaux campaign, looking at wines from Chile, Uruguay, the USA and China.

Chilean releases (red)

	Vintage	Region	Rating
Clos Apalta Vinotèque	2015	Colchagua	96
Clos di Lican	2022	Colchagua	98
Las Pizarras Pinot Noir (Errazuriz)	2023	Aconcagua	94
Las Pizarras Syrah (Errazuriz)	2023	Aconcagua	95

Clos Apalta Vinotéque 2015 (Apalta Valley, Colchagua, Chile; 57% Carménère; 26% Merlot; 17% Cabernet Sauvignon; 15% alcohol). Lithe. A little touch of trompette de la mort. Truffle, but just a hint. This teases with subtle hints of the cigar box and truffle secondary notes to come. Plums and damsons once again, blueberries. Incense. Patchouli candles. Graphite. Cedar. Walnut shell. Olive tapenede. This has a very croquant (crunchy) fruit for a wine already a decade in bottle. So youthful. So youthfully fresh, with a lovely sapid wave arriving just on the finish. Excellent, even if I sense yet more precision in the more recent vintages. 96. Clos du Lican 2022 (Apalta Valley, Colchagua, Chile; 100% Syrah; pH 3.52; 15% alcohol; only some 6,000 bottles produced). From a cooler vintage, I find this so gracious and composed. Glacially plunge-pool cool at the core but stretched over a broader and more ample frame, so this is more like plunging into a lake than a deep well. Raspberries. Crushed berries. So juicy, gracious and limpid. The tannins are ultra-fine grained and seem to creep between the layers, allowing them to glide or roll as if conveyed on beads of glass. Juicy and sapid right to the finish. An amazing wine. Unique. Vibrant. And with an intense salinity and sapidity combining on the finish. 98. Las Pizarras Pinot Noir 2023 (Aconcagua Costa DOC; 100% Pinot Noir; vinification in open tanks, with 2% whole bunch fermentation; 60% of the fruit underwent a cold maceration of 2-to-3 days before fermentation; aged for 12 months in 300 and 400-litre French oak barrels, 55% of which were new; 13% alcohol). Very fresh, very pure, very precise, very focussed. Aromatically lifted. Confit red and white currant. Raspberry and wild strawberry. This is fluid and lithe and yet the sinuousness is a little curtailed by the sheer viscosity. Not hyper-complex but more so texturally than aromatically as this is a very tactile wine in the mouth. I prefer this to the 2022, even if it is maybe just a little short on the finish. 94. Las Pizarras Syrah 2023 (Aconcagua Costa DOC; 100% Syrah; 15% whole cluster fermentation; aged for 16 months, 50% in Stockinger foudres, 40% in new French oak barrels, and the remainder in used French oak barrels; 13.5% alcohol). Very much in the same style as the Pinot. Sage. A rather wild and animal element. Heather and moorside herbs. Cherries, plums and raspberry. I find this more singular still than the Pinot Noir. Very pure and crystalline for a wine entirely composed of Syrah. Distinctive and distinctively sapid and racy, energetic and vibrant. There’s just a hint of spice, bringing additional detail and this is both naturally sweeter and a little less peppery than one might imagine, though there’s a little white pepper nonetheless (or is that auto-suggestion?). 95.

Chilean release (white)

	Vintage	Region	Rating
Las Pizarras Chardonnay	2023	Aconcagua	91

Las Pizarras Chardonnay 2023 (Aconcagua Costa DO; 100% Chardonnay; 100% whole-cluster, gentle pressing and fermentation in French oak barrels; just 35% malolactic fermentation; aged for 11 months in 400-liter French oak barrels, 12% new and 10% second use; 12.5% alcohol). Wild herbs – garrigue and oregano. White pear. Blood orange. Quite rich aromatically, but bitingly fresh on the attack with searing acidity taking charge and releasing a lovely spiral of freshness around a well-defined central spinal column. But the wine really needs it. For me it’s almost too rich. Lots of good choices have been made to retain as much freshness as possible here, but this still loses just a bit of shape towards the end – a battle between richness and acidity that the former wins, admittedly by a whisker. 91.

Uruguayan releases (red)

	Vintage	Region	Rating
Bodega Garzon Balasto	2022	Uruguay	94

Bodega Garzon Balasto 2022 (Uruguay; 45% Tannat, 35% Cabernet Franc e 20% Petit Verdot; 14% alcohol). Rich and spicier than the 2020 (when tasted together at a vertical at Vinexpo in Paris). Broader in frame too, but with the same luminous core. The tannins feel well-managed and they are more ordered and layered than any wine in the vertical other than perhaps the 2020. More red berry fruits joins the plums and damsons with time in the glass, gentle aeration or both. There’s quite a lot of extraction for a wine based on Tannat but the tannins are very refined given their sheer volume. This is meaty and bloody – with a black pudding and offal note. Peppery too. There’s a little hint of iodine that I also detect in the 2020. A hint of heather, making this seem quite wild and savage. I find this still very compact at the core and a little unresolved and un-delineated at this stage. It’s also a bit foursquare on the attack and opening. But it’s fresher and purer on the very clean finish and a lot less chewy than, say, the 2016. I like the direction of travel here though Balasto will always be something of a bruiser, above all in its youth. The finest wine in the flight and the best vintage of this that I have tasted. 94.

US releases (red)

	Vintage	Region	Rating
Acaibo	2019	Sonoma County	95+
Cathiard Vineyards	2022	Napa Valley	99
Promontory (Harlan)	2020	Napa Valley	100
Vérité La Muse	2015	Sonoma County	NYT
Vérité La Joie	2015	Sonoma County	NYT
Vérité Le Desir	2015	Sonoma County	NYT

  Acaibo 2019 (Sonoma Valley; 88% Cabernet Sauvignon; 9% Merlot; 3% Cabernet Franc; 14% alcohol). Elegant and refined and a little different than previous vintage with the cedar and graphite already well-present and nicely enrobing the dark berry and more delicate stone fruits. Wild sage. A gentle touch of sweet spice too – a little more present on the palate. Lithe and crystalline, a well-defined backbone and with a lovely sheen and glossiness to the tannins. Impressive. Nicely balanced. 95. Cathiard Vineyard 2022 (Napa Valley; 100% Cabernet Sauvignon; 14.5% alcohol). Excellent. Denser, plumper, richer and more aromatically expressive than Promontory but almost equally impressive in its purity and balance. Intensely floral with those parfumier’s essences of violets and rose petals. Damson fruit confit. Black cherry. Blueberry. This is sumptuous and gracious with amazing poise and harmony and the most plunge-pool core. Fabulous with a lovely hint of graphite enrobing the fruits. So juicy despite the density. 99. Promontory (Harlan) 2020 (Napa Valley; 100% Cabernet Sauvignon; 13.5% alcohol). Utterly beguiling. Gracious, calm, relaxed, composed, a little introvert and reticent but exuding class and balance and harmony even in its slight introspectiveness. Delightfully subtle. The delicate floral notes are the first to show – peony and lilac. Then the fruits. Cassis. Blueberries. And there’s a lovely slight stalky leafiness that really brings out the character of the Cabernet. So gracious. So utterly beautiful. Exquisitely balanced. There’s a diaphanous sheen and gloss to this that is so beguiling and it is so much less demonstrative in its intensity and concentration than any other Napa wine. I’m in raptures. Note the low alcohol. This was picked early – so early in fact that the forest fires had yet to begin. 100. Vérité La Muse 2015 (Sonoma County; 90% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, 3% Malbec; sourced from Alexander Valley, Bennett Valley, Chalk Hill and Knights Valley; aged for 17 months in French oak barrels, 95% of which were new; 14.7% alcohol). Due to the tiny size of this library release, no samples were available for tasting. NYT. Vérité La Joie 2015 (Sonoma County; 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, 4% Petit Verdot; sourced from Alexander Valley, Bennett Valley, Chalk Hill and Knights Valley; aged for 17 months in French oak barrels, 95% of which were new; 13.9% alcohol). Due to the tiny size of this library release, no samples were available for tasting. NYT. Vérité Le Desir 2015 (Sonoma County; 64% Cabernet Franc, 27% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Malbec; sourced from Alexander Valley, Bennett Valley, Chalk Hill and Knights Valley; aged for 17 months in French oak barrels, 95% of which were new; 14.4% alcohol). Due to the tiny size of this library release, no samples were available for tasting. NYT.

Chinese releases (red)

	Vintage	Region	Rating
Ao Yun	2021	Yunnan	97+

Ao Yun 2021 (Yunnan; 57% Cabernet Sauvignon; 19% Cabernet Franc; 12% Merlot; 6% Syrah; 6% Petit Verdot; sourced from a total of 31 hectares in 773 sub-parcels from 4 different village vineyards at different altitudes - 21% Xidang, 13% Sinong 26% Shuori and 40% Adong – with grapes sourced between 2100 and 2600 metres of altitude and hand-picked over 56 days; a final yield of 20 hl/ha with 51% of the harvest used in the grand vin; 100% per cent regenerative and organic viticulture; pH 3.44; 13.8% alcohol). A miraculous wine involving the most incredible human effort. The winery is at 2600 metres of altitude – almost three times higher than any other wine offered on la place. And, because of that, the wines from each plot need to be tasted at sea level before the final assemblage (to assess them at altitude is akin to doing so in an aeroplane)! The hottest vintage ever recorded here and one characterised by a very long period of drought in the first half of the year followed by much needed rainfall in the summer months, leading to some significant recalibration with more fruit from higher altitude making the selection. Wow! Super-intense and very much defined by the parfumier’s essences of flowers. They’re too intense to be natural in a way. Incense. Juniper. Clove. Crushed and concentrated essences of violet and rose. Turkish delight. Cedar. Black cherry and fruits of the forest. Super fresh and with lots of tension, the tannins incredibly svelte. I love this, but there is just the hint of residual sugar that prevents my note from being even higher. Fascinating. 97.