My 12 Most Memorable Wines of 2023

The wine industry has blessed me with ample opportunities for connection. Connection to people, to the produce of this vast world, and to my own history. As a look back on a year of personal and professional change, I am grateful for the abundance in my life and the generosity of the people who make it possible.

Check out the Most Memorable Wines of Past Years

2021, 2020 and 2019.

This list of the 12 most memorable wines of 2023 is not a list of the very best wines, although they are often extraordinary, but of wine experiences.

Without further ado: Here are the Most Memorable Wines of 2023 in order of memorability.

Kopke 1978 Colheita Porto

#1 Most Memorable of 2023.

I began my big Portugal trip with the exhilarating Wine Future Conference in Coimbra. The sessions were wonderful and the conversations with some of the smartest people in the wine business were even better.

But the tastings were legendary. The flagship tasting of the event was a tasting of “Legendary & Historic Madiera & Port by Richard Mayson.” It was almost too decadent and I might have filled this entire post about it, but I’ll settle for a beautifully warming birth year single harvest tawny from Kopke.

Taylor’s 50 Year Old “Golden Age” Tawny Porto

#2 Most Memorable of 2023.

Later that same day (!!!!) our group were guests of Adrian Bridge and The Fladgate Partnership in one of their restaurants on the WOW Porto campus. The law in Portugal had recently changed to allow 50 Year Old Tawnies and we were treated to this exquisite port out of large format.

It was the vinous essence of curling up around a roaring fire with a good book. Fabulous stuff.

Foradori 2001 Granato

#3 Most Memorable of 2023

I had a chance to return to Panama City, Panama with Steve Maher of Cutting Edge Selections. We hauled a few bottles of wine down in our suitcase, including some old stragglers from the depths of the CES Warehouse. We didn’t know if it was going to still be good, but I’m a huge fan of Foradori. As you can see by the numerous videos on this website from the winery.

It was perfect. Full of rich smoke, earth, stone, blood, fire. Something truly special.

Ken Wright Cellars 2012 Pinot Noir “Tanager Vineyard”

#4 Most Memorable of 2023

2023 was the year that I retired from my position as Vice President of Marketing at Cutting Edge Selections. It was after founder Mark Maher’s sudden passing in 2016 that I first joined the management team. This large format bottle was signed by Mark’s friends, family, employees, and customers, at his funeral. It was a wonderful honor to be able to enjoy it during the company party at Cafe Mediterranean in Cincinnati.

Ken Wright’s Pinot Noirs always reward aging and this was no exception.

Chateau Talbot 1986 Saint-Julien

#5 Most Memorable of 2023

The Earle in Ann Arbor, Michigan is a secret gem of a restaurant for wine lovers. It has a fabulous selection of classic mature wines at insanely reasonable prices. A group of friends and I try to rain their cellar every change we get.

This mature Bordeaux is the UR-Bordeaux. I’ve never tasted Left Bank perfection like this with dignity, length, complexity, and a mix of black cherries and graphite.

Kobal Bajta Blaufränkisch Rosé Pet Nat

#6 Most Memorable of 2023

This Pet-Nat from the steep slopes of Haloze, Slovenia is pure hedonistic deliciousness. I poured this every time I had the chance this year - Columbus Ohio Natural Wine Festival & Rosé Partay in Louisville come to mind. It always makes everyone happy.

Once the weather gets warm, I’ll be enjoying this everywhere again!

Hiyu Espina II, Grape, Pear, Plum, Elderberry, Rose Hip, Blackberry Wine

#7 Most Memorable of 2023

More Crazy-Fun Natural Wine! I was a fan of Hiyu wines before Third Coast Soif in Chicago, but tasting all the crazy-beautiful solidified that opinion.

This tastes like homemade fruit wine made by fae creatures that are trying to seduce you to become their monarch. It would work on me.

Clos de la Roilette 2021 Fleurie

#8 Most Memorable of 2023

This was just a shockingly beautiful Beaujolais that was taken out on a beautiful sunny day and every customer bought some. How it is supposed to work

Tomac Amfora Brut Nature

#9 Most Memorable of 2023

Visiting Tomac in Plešivica, Croatia during the 2021 Vinum distributor trip was one of the highlights of the entire week. I immediately started selling the small amount of wine that was available. Unfortunately, the profound Amphora sparkling wine wasn’t one of the options.

You can imagine my pleasure when a friend brought me back a bottle of this rare wine during his trip to Croatia. I enjoyed its offbeat richness with beautiful raw oysters on a friend’s balcony in the spring of 2023

Chateau Gilette 1978 Sauternes

#10 Most Memorable of 2023

I love chasing birth year wines, but I am cursed with a below average vintage. The classic age worthy regions - Bordeaux and Vintage Port - both didn’t perform well in 1978. One can always count on dessert wine and we are living through an era of extreme undervaluing of dessert wine on the secondary market. This wine was picked up for less than it would have cost on release. The wine was beautiful and shared with friends over a nice cheese tray assembled by the world class team at The Rhined in Cincinnati.

Brown Estate 2021 Zinfandel

#11 Most Memorable of 2023

One of the best wine-related moments last year was being able to represent Brown Estate at the first Black Wine Festival in Cincinnati. Brown Estate is the first (and maybe only) black-owned estate winery in the Napa Valley.

The event was very fun, full of energy, and a great experience. I really enjoyed introducing the wines to lots of people and telling the winery story.

Joh. Jos Prum 2001 Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Auslese

#12 Most Memorable of 2023

It is hard to think that 22 years from vintage date is still infanticide for a wine, but Prum wines are something else. Delicious, hedonistic, dense, aromatically complex, and still needed a couple more decades in the cellar. Wow!

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Disclosure 1: At the time of this writing, I no longer work for the wholesale distributor that represents some of these wines in Ohio and Kentucky, but I did for more than half the year. Neither my representation of these wines or lack thereof, affects this list in any way.

Disclosure 2: The wines on this list were a combination of promotional samples, purchased at discount due to my industry status, tasted as part of wine tastings (some paid and some free,) tasted with friends who purchased them, or purchased by myself at full price. None of this influences my decisions or ranking.

What Makes VINTAGE PORT so special? 6TH GENERATION WINEMAKER | Fonseca | David Guimaraens

David Guimaraens, a sixth-generation winemaker at Fonseca, discusses the history and winemaking process of the renowned vintage port house.

He explains that Fonseca is located in Vila Nova de Gaia, separate from the vineyards in the Douro region where the grapes are grown. Guimaraens describes how his ancestors built relationships with local farmers and brought the port down from the Douro Valley to Vila Nova de Gaia for aging and blending. He also discusses the traditional method of foot treading used to extract color and tannin from the grape skins.

Guimaraens emphasizes the importance of vintage port, which is made from the best ports of a single harvest and ages in the bottle to develop rich flavors and aromas. He explains the process of decanting vintage port to remove sediment and highlights its ability to age for decades.

Guimaraens also discusses Fonseca Bin 27, a port that was launched by his father in 1972 and is known for its fruitiness and versatility.

He concludes by sharing the history of his family's involvement with Fonseca and the significance of the Fonseca name.

I hope you enjoy this beautiful 11 minute video.

THIS IS EPISODE 96 OF UNDERSTANDING WINE WITH AUSTIN BEEMAN

SPECIAL THANKS:

• THE FLADGATE PARTNERSHIP - FONSECA - WOW PORTO

  • Adrian Bridge

  • David Guimaraens

  • Maria Delamain

  • Ana Margarida Morgado

  • José Sá

• WAGSTAFF MARKETING

  • Tori Katz

  • Kyrsten Cazas

  • Charisse Smalls

  • Amanda Hathaway

• SOMMSPIRATIONS

  • Brianne Cohen

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TRANSCRIPT:

Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words’ and non-english words. Any persistent errors are mine alone.

Or, watch the video. It is awesome.

David Guimaraens:

Our first vintages at Fonseca were launched in the 1840s and still today, Fonseca is known as the vintage port house. It's the house that has the greatest number of a 100-point vintage ports.

My name is David Guimaraens and my family started Fonseca six generations ago, and I'm proud to have been the winemaker now back home for 33 years.

Well, welcome to the Fonseca Visitor Centre. We are in Vila Nova de Gaia, and Vila Nova de Gaia is where you come to get the history of the port trade, very much from the perspective of the port shipper, the port merchants. Where that is very important to put into context is when you think about the world of wine. Most wine regions around the world, the vineyards and the wineries are the same location.

We are here in Vila Nova de Gaia, which is in fact on the coast, very separate geographically to the demarcated wine region of the Douro where the vineyards are and where the young ports are made. That's very much a historical perspective, and when we look at our history that goes back over three centuries, the port trade is all about merchants like my family, my ancestors, who started trading in port.

We established ourselves here in Vila Nova de Gaia with our port lodges that we are in here today. My ancestors, as good merchants that they were, they would go to the valley and they built ongoing relationships with local farmers.

Port used to be brought down from the Douro Valley in the barrels, in these flat-bottomed boats who'd have to navigate through the rapids until they reached here, Vila Nova de Gaia, where the aging, the blending occurred.

Then it's exactly those merchants who did the other very important part of the trade, which is taking port to the four corners of the world to be served in the many different styles that port has. In the old days, most port would go to the market in barrel. In fact, up until 1970, the vintage port used to be bottled at the merchants in the different countries. In the UK, Holland, Denmark, three of our important traditional markets of vintage port.

When we think about the winemaking of port, we look at the traditional method of foot treading, where you take the grapes, which they'll be picked into these open granite fermenters. Then in the evening, for a fermentation batch of eight tons, we'll put 20 people in there, doing a very regimented treading. Then the next day, when most of the people who were treading the evening before were actually going to the vineyard to pick another batch of grapes, we'll keep a group of five or six people behind treading during the day.

That method, although it's very primitive, it is very effective. Because in port, because port is a fortified wine where we stop the fermentation halfway through by adding a neutral grape spirit, we have a very short time in which to extract all of the color and all of the tannin from the skins.

So, that's why this traditional method of foot treading is very effective. Still today, we continue to use that method for producing all of our vintage ports.

What makes vintage port so special, and what is vintage port? Vintage port is all about selecting the best ports that we make in one harvest and then these ports will sit in wood for two years, until they're bottled. Then, the vintage will go into the bottle and it will continue its aging process in the bottle. As the tawny ports aged in oak, in contact with oxygen, and get those nutty stars.

The vintage port, because it is bottled only two years after the harvest, very young, and then we'll continue aging in a reduced atmosphere with the absence of oxygen. What will happen is, as it ages, it throws its color and it develops all these wonderfully rich, spicy, bottle-maturity aromas.

That is why vintage port, I consider, is one of the greatest wines of the wine lover, because every bottle of vintage is a time capsule.

It'll capture the character of the year and the vineyards where it comes from. That's where you get the house style. Fonseca Vintage will be made up from Fonseca's three vineyards through properties. Together, it produces this extraordinary vintage port which is renowned for its intensity of fruit, its richness, its fatness, and its capacity to age for decades in the bottle. That will characterize a Fonseca Vintage.

An important aspect with vintage port is that, as it ages in the bottle, it will start throwing a sediment and that sediment will increase over time.

If you're going to be serving a vintage port which is older than four years of age, then you need to decant it.

That decanting is important so that you remove the sediment and so that what you serve is not cloudy. Because if you pour a bottle and lift it between each glass, you'll end up mixing up your sediment. That is a very important part of vintage port.

One of the other virtues of vintage port is exactly its ability to age in the bottle. For one, it is the safest bottle in your wine cellar, because if you forget about it, it's only going to get better. It's not something you can say about all of your wines in your wine cellar. But, this extraordinary ability to age for a lifetime in the bottle gives it the pleasures for any wine lover. If he discovers a vintage port that he likes, he can buy more than one bottle and then lay them down in his wine cellar and open a bottle when he feels like it. Accompany it as it ages.

That's one way of looking at vintage port. Another way of looking at vintage is that it's also an extraordinary gift to give to someone who you care for tremendously and you want that person to remember you, maybe even many years after we might not be here. For example, you have a godson, and instead of giving them a silver picture frame which will get lost somewhere, if you give him a case of vintage and you dedicate it to him, when he grows up, when he gets to the age that he discovers fine wine, fine vintage port, I guarantee, when he opens one of those bottles, he will remember you.

You can do that for a godson, you can do it for your children, you can give it to somebody who you like dearly.

Vintage port, not only being one of the great wines of the world which has the greatest expression of location, of year, it is also one of the best wines in the world to lay down, to put in your cellars.

To drink whenever you feel of an occasion to enjoy a good bottle of wine.

Well, Fonseca Bin 27 couldn't be closer to my heart. It is the port that my father launched in 1972. My first real memory of Bin 27 is when I was sitting around the dining table with my father. My father was making up the first mock-up bottle of Fonseca Bin 27, what was the way he wanted it to be taken to market. This was the original Bin 27 bottle. You take a normal bottle and you stencil the name Fonseca Bin 27 Port.

So, I actually helped him paint that first bottle, because although I was young at the time, I'm not sure my father was a great artist, but I remember that well. That became the reference, Fonseca Bin 27 package which got launched in 1972. But, it's very special for many other reasons.

We wanted to take to the market a port which had the characteristics of a young vintage port.

What is a young vintage port? It's a port with a lot of fruit, young berry, rich blackcurrant fruit, a lot of structure. The perfect combination with chocolate or with cheese, but for everyday drinking. That's what we have done in Fonseca Bin 27, and the reason why it's the number-one selling port in the United States. Because people enjoy it as such.

Here, we look at my family history. From Manoel Pedro Guimaraens, who was my ancestor, in fact very much Portuguese, who started working with João dos Santos Fonseca back in the early 19th century. It was, in fact, him who went to the UK and developed the house of Fonseca. João dos Santos Fonseca, in fact, left the business in his generation. So my family, the Guimaraens family, continued for the destinations of Fonseca exclusively from the 1840s forward.

I myself am called David Fonseca Guimaraens, because Manoel Pedro and such was his relationship with João dos Santos Fonseca, that the Fonseca name got introduced to his children and subsequently from there forward. Inevitably, Guimaraens is not an easy name to pronounce and Fonseca is a wonderful name and is continued as our house name.

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EQUIPMENT:

Main Camera: Canon R8

2nd Camera: DJi Pocket 2

Mic:  Audio Technica AT875R

Travel Bag: Peak Design Travel Line Backpack 45L.

Camera Bag:  Peak Design Everyday Messenger Bag.

Music Licensed from Epidemic Sound.

FTC Compliance: I have no professional relationship with Fonseca or the Fladgate Partnership other than selling their wines during my time as a retail buyer. This is not sponsored. See more.

ANCIENT WINE CELLAR Tour | Boutique FAMILY PORT HOUSE | Martha's Wines & Spirits

Rita Marta, a member of the Martha’s Wines and Spirits family, gives a tour of their old cellars in the Douro Valley.

The walls of the main house date back to 1727, although they have been reconstructed over time. The family has been in the grape-growing business since then, but only started making wine in the early 20th century. They initially sold their grapes and later began selling their own bottled wine in 1970.

The family primarily focuses on producing Tawny ports, which are traditionally more popular among Portuguese families. They also have French casks from Bordeaux that they use to age their ports and spirits.

The estate is located in a narrow part of the Douro Valley and has olive trees strategically placed on the mountains to help with water absorption.

The Martha family is currently in the fifth generation of running the business, which produces port wines, Douro wines, and spirits.

I hope you enjoy this beautiful 6 minute video.

THIS IS EPISODE 95 OF UNDERSTANDING WINE WITH AUSTIN BEEMAN

SPECIAL THANKS:

• Rita Marta for taking me behind the scenes at Martha's Wines & Spirits.

• Filmed on location in Regua, Portugal. November 2023.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words’ and non-english words. Any persistent errors are mine alone.

Or, watch the video. It is awesome.

Rita Marta:

These are some of the oldest cellars that you will find in the Douro here. We're not open to the public, so they're not available for everybody to see, but hopefully, one day, we could show this to the world. But I'm happy to show it to you already.

Austin Beeman:

How old are they?

Rita Marta:

Well, these walls... The walls in the main house, it goes back to 1727. Obviously, I mean, they've been reconstructed, otherwise they weren't here. And even though it doesn't look like, we do a little bit of maintenance. Though we want to keep always the original walls, we do an effort. And everything that you see around, all this humidity, it's really good for the wines. But the family has been here since 1727. And we were grape-growers, initially, so we not always made wine. Only in the beginning of the 19th century is when with our grapes, we stopped selling them and we start making wine, putting it in these barrels, and selling them to big shipping companies in Gaia, in Porto, where you've been. And then at some point, the family decided that that was the way to go, and the business went that way, producing wine.

But it was only 1970 that my grandfather bottled the first bottle of Martha's Port with our own name. But we had stocks at that time. We were selling 1931, 1956, all single-harvest. So my family never did a vintage. The first year we did a vintage, that we convinced my dad to do, it was 2016. You'll taste it. But because traditionally my family was always all about Tawny ports.

So here we have also some Colheitas. So Tawny, single harvest Tawnys. Tawn y ports traditionally are what Portuguese families would produce most. And the vintages, or the ruby styles, are traditionally more from foreign owned companies like there are now in the Douro. They've been here for many generations. But the baseline, it's a foreigner company. And so everything that is Tawny means oak and wood, right? So we need it in different formats.

Here are some in these bottles. We opened a few years ago, there was a 19th century port wine tasting. And we convinced my father to open some of these bottles from 1890. And they were spectacular. They were amazing. Outstanding. So these are French casks from Bordeaux, usually four to six years. And then we use them for the ports. Before they come in, they're not new, they're old, but before they come in, we scratch outside here at the front to put our logo. And on the side we change this arch, but the inside we don't scratch because we want it with the red wine. And then we put port, it ages the port. And after the port, we age our spirits inside.

And this is the real Douro, very narrow. This is not too bad. You can still fit one person after-

You see this beautiful color that is already this red, beautiful autumn color. So one of the things here in the Douro is that because of the schist, the soil, we don't have so much organic, what do you call, organic soils, with a lot of organic material. So it's good for us also to leave some vegetation in the middle. So it helps bring worms and organic things to the soil to keep our soils healthy.

It is an old estate. It was built in 1727. It used to be a whole property with the vineyards around and so on. But then with all the family heritage and so on, it was separated with the sons. Each gets a little bit. So right now our winery and the main estate, it's separated a little bit from the vineyards and we have everything separated in this mountain, San Pedro. And on the other one, it's near the Grasso.

We have here and there a few olive trees on top of the vineyards, on top of the mountains. These were our ancestors who put them here, is just, they help. This soil is a schist, right? So it drains a lot. And here in this region is not the driest sub-region of the Douro Valley, but it is fairly dry. So the roots of the olive trees, they go deeper than the vines. So they help suck the water up. So we put them strategically on top of some mountains to help suck the water up to the vines.

Hi. Hello everyone. My name is Rita. Rita Marta. I belong to Martha's family. Together with my brother we are the fifth generation in charge of the business. Right now we are located in Baixa Corgo (lower Corgo), a sub-region of the Douro Valley. Our winery is a very exquisite winery. I mean, we are right in the middle of a small village, 10 minutes away from the Regua train station, in the heart of the Douro Valley. We are producers of port wines, Douro wines, and spirits.

Work With Austin

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FOLLOW THE WINE ADVENTURE

• Website:

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EQUIPMENT:

Main Camera: Canon R8

2nd Camera: DJi Pocket 2

Mic:  Audio Technica AT875R

Travel Bag: Peak Design Travel Line Backpack 45L.

Camera Bag:  Peak Design Everyday Messenger Bag.

Music Licensed from Epidemic Sound.

FTC Compliance:I have no professional relationship with Martha’s Wines & Spirits, but I am friends with Rita Marta, who attended the Kedge Business School Global MBA program with me. This is not sponsored. See more.