June 21, 2024 – After a hot day of wine tasting in the Santa Cruz Mountains with a posse of 10 folks from random parts of my life, it was a great relief to get home to our air-conditioned place, reaching for a glass of 2023 Morgan Metallico. This wine spends 5 months in stainless steel and sees no oak whatsoever, not even the well-used variety. It is a great entry point to enjoying the exceptionally long, cool vintage of 2023, as we seem to be wading into the overall warmer and more heat-endowed vintage of 2024, which so far seems very much on track to be closer to 2019 in terms of progress. Let’s hope we don’t have a repeat of 2022.
Here are five new releases from Morgan from the 2023 vintage, and one from 2022, all of which are credited to winemaker, Sam Smith, who shows his careful grasp of all the vineyards Morgan uses to construct its impressive portfolio.
I’d like to commend Morgan for being among the forward-thinking wineries to embrace the use of screwcaps for all their aromatic white wines and rosé. Using corks for oak-aged Chardonnay and reds will likely continue.
2023 Morgan Metallico Unoaked Chardonnay, Santa Lucia Highlands – Bright, crisp and intense, this delivers everything that you want from a Chardonnay: alpine flowers, gently crushed chamomile and a bit of melon, with a lively smooth attack that soothes your tongue with a sleek slick of guava, peach and crisp pear. There’s even a hint of pineapple tropicality. The acidity is full on, due to the lack of malolactic, and the finish is long and supple. An outstanding Chardonnay from top vineyards in the SLH, including Leavens, McIntyre and Playa Alta. Clones are Musqé, Roger Rose and 96, so not the usual suspects. It retails for $24. 3,545 cases produced.
2023 Rosé of Grenache, Mission Ranch, Arroyo Seco – I was super excited to try this rosé, as I love Grenache, and aside from Russell Joyce’s excellent Grenache-Mourvedre rosé, haven’t had one rock my world like this one. If you like a bit of racy red grapefruit along with wild strawberry, orange blossom and a hint of pink lemonade, this might hit the sweet spot. Superbly juicy with just the right amount of sassy acid wrapped around grapefruit and grilled peach, this is way too easy to drink, and could become your summer patio pounder. But, be forewarned: it’s 14%, even though picked for rosé. 318 cases produced
2022 Twelve Clones Pinot Noir, Santa Lucia Highlands – This is always a go-to Pinot Noir from Morgan, for its consistent display of what makes the Santa Lucia Highlands such a standard of measure for fruit-forward embraceability. Well-composed, with generous red cherry fruit, cherry soda, pomegranate and plum, accented by leather, tobacco and herbs, the 2022 Twelve Clones Pinot Noir hails from top drawer vineyards, including Double L, KW Ranch, Highlands, Boekenoogen and Tondré. From a warm vintage with a hot finish, this wine sports a streak of ripe red fruit around a solid core of well-mannered tannins, exhibiting the opulence of the vintage in the soft, sofa-like finish. Aged in 36 percent new French oak. 3,900 cases produced
2023 Morgan Albariño, Mission Ranch, Arroyo Seco – Snappy and bright, with juicy just-about-ripe nectarine, lime, honeydew melon and fresh-cut pineapple, this slightly saline wine has a textural element that leans towards fine sand. Rested in French oak (12.5 percent new) for 5 months, this wine loves calamari salad, Thai noodles with shrimp and zucchini ribbons, and I suppose it would be awesome with octopus, which I no longer eat. Those little guys are smarter than most people: we might need them around.
2023 Morgan Sauvignon Blanc, Arroyo Seco – Tropicality rules here, right from the first whiff. Guava and papaya, pear juice and fruit cocktail, make this a very broadly appealing style of SB, with nothing polarizing or outre about it. This is one of Morgan’s largest production wines, with 5,417 cases produced. Sourced from Cedar Lane, Ranch 10, Riverbank and Zabala, this Sauvignon Blanc was tank-fermented and then aged for 5 months in 8 percent new French and Hungarian oak to soften the edges.
2023 Morgan Riesling, Double L Vineyard, SLH – To make this graceful and elegant wine, the grapes were foot-stomped and left to macerate overnight, after which the juice was gently pressed and then cold settled. Aromatics of just picked stone fruit, lemon, lime and green apple were preserved through cold fermentation, which was then arrested by chilling to achieve an off-dry style (similar to German Kabinett) and low alcohol (10.5 percent). At just 1.4 percent RS, it has just the right kiss of sugar to offset the racy acid (8.49 g/l!!) that makes Riesling such a culinary powerhouse when it comes to pairing with intensely flavored foods. This wine is super minerally, and the texture is silky, hinting at further richening over time. I must confess I really wanted to stash this one away to see how it develops.
In other news, a shoutout to John Benedetti of Sante Arcangeli, for achieving a 96 point score, along with Editor’s Choice, from Wine Enthusiast for the 2022 Split Rail Vineyard Pinot Noir. Combined with the 94+ this wine received from Wine Advocate, Benedetti says, “the 2022 vintage of Split Rail is now the highest-rated wine we’ve had in our 16-year existence.”
Wine Advocate called it “a centerpiece example of Pinot Noir from this section of the Santa Cruz Mountains.”
Kudos to Benedetti!
About the author
Laura Ness is a longtime wine journalist, columnist and judge who contributes regularly to Edible Monterey Bay, Spirited, WineOh.Tv, Los Gatos Magazine and Wine Industry Network, and a variety of consumer publications. Her passion is telling stories about the intriguing characters who inhabit the fascinating world of wine and food.
