WINE & SPIRITS MAGAZINE 100 BEST FOR $20 OR LESS

Fresh floral scents lead into this wine's flavors of honeycrisp apple, yellow pear and white peach. It's wrapped in a satiny mousse and just enough sweetness (10 grams per liter) to amplify those juicy fruit tones. It's an elegant wine, perfect for a high-end by-the-glass program.

This has incredible energy and depth, with a tight, firm and powerful tannin frame that is present throughout. Full-bodied with a deep core of dark fruit, slate, minerals and iron. Oyster shells, porcini, licorice and some cedar, too. More closed than the 2015. Great wine. Try this after a couple of years. It will last for decades.  Second tasting.

Sliced apples, lemons, wild herbs and some cream on the nose. It’s medium-bodied with an oily texture. Very fresh. Drink now.

The super-flinty nose with a note of grilled lemon pulls you into this light and creamy dry pinot blanc that plows its own furrow. Quite an austere balance, due to the pronounced tannins, then wild-herb character at the very dry finish. Only 11.5% alcohol! From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. Drink or hold.

The Vietti 2020 Colli Tortonesi Timorasso Derthona (aged in a combination of oak and ceramic tile-lined cement) is a wine of nice tension and ample texture. These contrasting characteristics shape the wine, which is horizontal in approach with broad appeal. The bouquet delivers tones of orchard fruit, saffron, honey and crushed stone. This medium-bodied wine will evolve slowly over the next 10 years, transitioning to more mineral, beeswax and dried fruit aromas. Production is 9,000 bottles.

Very ripe, yet discreet and so mineral and punchy, almost like smelling a wet rock. Bone-dry and crisp, yet elegant and textured. Really attractive and subtle with a linear, mineral finish. Delicious now, but will hold, too.

Some sweet-vanilla notes now to the savory oranges, tar and cranberries. A full-bodied nebbiolo that feels expansive, yet it’s ethereal on the palate with lots of firm, sandblasted tannins. Long and juicy. Needs two years to allow the tannins and the oak to integrate more. Will shine with time. Drink from 2024.

The 2019 Barolo Cerequio is a worthy follow up to the stellar 2018. Aromatic and deeply pitched, the 2019 races across the palate with remarkable depth and intensity. Crushed red berry fruit, rose petal, mint and cinnamon all open in the glass, but it is the wine's silkiness and suppleness that impresses most. A kick of acids and tannins puts an exclamation point on the finish. This is a gorgeous Cerequio that takes all the finesse this site offers, and then turns up the volume. What a wine.