Matt Walls: My top wines of 2023

Well, this is awkward. Top of the list of my wines of the year isn’t a Hermitage or Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but an IGP Côtes Catalanes. Given the amount of memorable Rhône wines I taste each year, it might come as a surprise that the number one spot goes to a wine from the Roussillon. But there’s no denying it. No wine made more of an impression on me in the last 12 months.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Matt Walls’ top 10 wines of 2023

And yes, it’s the equal lowest scoring wine in my top ten, but scores are an attempt to concisely communicate quality above all else. What’s more, this is a personal selection, and for that there are other criteria that come into play – for me, it’s important that a wine has character and personality. Another important element that’s rarely discussed is a wine’s ability to surprise. And Danjou-Banessy’s Estaca 2020 shocked me.

To begin with, I was wrong-footed by the lowly IGP classification. It announced a relatively straightforward varietal Grenache, albeit one with local character. What I found was a particular iteration of this grape that I’d never encountered before.

Everything about the wine was extraordinary. The colour was a pale cherry red with an orange tint. The aromatics were sublime. I’m a big fan of whole-bunch fermentation with old-vine Grenache, and here it was unusually pronounced, giving the wine a deep, herbal complexity: crushed bay leaves and rose petals in wood smoke.

It had the plump plushness that makes Grenache so luxurious to taste, but crucially it had lift and freshness too. I didn’t expect an IGP Côtes Catalanes to be so compelling, so exciting.

What makes the wine even more notable is that the Danjou-Banessy brothers did not acidify, chaptalise, add yeast, fine or filter. No wonder it had such purity of expression. Such a unique version of Grenache can only be the product of a very special place. I sat in wonder.

It created a tremor in my mental wine map, changing the landscape of this corner of France. I’ve been getting to know Rhône varieties for many years, so it takes a lot to reframe my understanding of grapes like Grenache. This wine revealed another facet of the jewel, a secret drawer in the cabinet.

This is how much the wine stunned me. This sense of shock is just one of the reasons why it made such a strong impression and created such a vivid memory. Not just a memory of the wine, but of the place where I drank it, and the people I drank it with.

A bottle consumed then forgotten is a fleeting pleasure. A bottle consumed then remembered is something more profound. Unlike viewing a painting, the only way we can revisit a wine-drinking experience is through memory.

All of the bottles on this list made a strong impression on me this year. And I will go on enjoying them in my mind for years to come.

See tasting notes and scores for Matt Walls’ top 10 wines of 2023

Wines are listed in order of which made the biggest impression on Matt Walls in 2023

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