Wine of the Year 2022 from James Suckling

“Our Wine of the Year 2022 is also a reference point in so many ways. It comes from a long line of great wines from California, and it was first made in 1936 in Napa Valley. Personally, I started drinking this great wine when I was a teenager, receiving an occasional sip from my late father, John Suckling, who collected the wine from the 1960s to 1990s. He even gave me a bottle of the 1962 when I started working at The Wine Spectator in December 1981 and told me to taste and understand it so I “would know about great wine.” The Beaulieu Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Georges de Latour Private Reserve 2019 is our Wine of the Year 2022. And not only it is a perfect wine, but it is also a wine that highlights the greatness of so many wines from Napa Valley and the United States from the 2019 vintage. The wine is so filigree in nature, with layers of fine tannins and complex aromas and flavors of currants, tobacco and mahogany. Plus, it has the structure to age beautifully for decades ahead. I love the way this BV private reserve shows more complexity and finesse even though the pure and bold character is still there. I spoke to BV Chief Winemaker Trevor Durling about it in May in Napa Valley and he said that he had been working toward a more “refined” and “drinkable” BV Private Reserve in recent years to honor the great bottlings of the 1960s and 1970s. He has achieved that with the 2019 and more. I even drank a pretty bottle of 1970 BV Private Reserve this week in Hong Kong, and it gave me the feeling the 2019 will be even better. We will see.”

-James Suckling, Jamessuckling.com

History of Georges de Latour

When André Tchelistcheff joined Beaulieu Vineyard in 1938, he tasted the de Latour family’s private wine – what they called “Private Reserve” – from the 1936 vintage. In 1940, Beaulieu Vineyard released the first vintage of Private Reserve and named it in our founder’s honor. The resulting wine became the first release of Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine that was destined to become Napa Valley’s first “cult” Cabernet. In 80+ years since Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon has become one of the most collected American wines.

2019 Georges de Latour

This vintage is truly exemplary, with a nuanced, exuberant nose showing dark, ripe, berry fruit aromas of black raspberry, red currant, and black cherry, alongside delicate chaparral herb notes of wild lavender, rose, fresh mint, sage, and thyme. We hand-selected grapes from the finest Cabernet Sauvignon vines from the western bench of the Rutherford AVA in our iconic BV Ranches No. 1 and No. 2, originally planted by Georges de Latour in the early 1900s.