Wine Spectator

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The wines of Spain, including those of its iconic Rioja region, have long been the subject of an annual tasting report in the pages of Wine Spectator. They also feature prominently on many of our trademark lists, including the Top 100. In 2020, Bodegas Marqués de Murrieta, one of the founding wineries in Rioja, was awarded the Wine of the Year honor for its Tempranillo-based red Rioja Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial 2010 (96 points, $139). However, the last time that we took a deep dive and focused specifically on Rioja on our cover was Oct. 15, 2012. Given the excitement over the 2021 vintage in Rioja and the fact that the region is coincidentally celebrating 100 years since its formal recognition in 1925, I dispatched senior editor Alison Napjus,…

In 1990, on a sleepy corner of Lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, chef and restaurateur Drew Nieporent (the force behind fine dining venues Montrachet and Nobu) and Academy Award–winning actor Robert De Niro caused a stir with the opening of Tribeca Grill. In the decades that followed, the Wine Spectator Grand Award winner’s dining room was filled with Hollywood stars, wine world legends and lovers of the good life. Now, those days have come to an end. After an announcement in February, the restaurant served its last meal March 1. “People love these [fine dining] institutions, but this generation [of diner] in New York City, for whatever reason they don’t revere them,” Nieporent told Wine Spectator. “Tribeca Grill is a place that’s lasted 34 years; our food’s good, our wine…

In a brief statement to its wine club members, Napa’s Newton Vineyard announced Feb. 13 that the winery is permanently closing. “We have cherished every moment spent crafting exceptional wines and sharing them with our dedicated wine club members,” the announcement read. The winery, owned by luxury giant LVMH since 2001, was destroyed in the 2020 Glass Fire and has been making wine in a temporary space since. The statement cited the fire as the reason ownership made the difficult decision. Newton was founded in 1977 by Peter Newton, an English journalist, Oxford-trained lawyer and paper magnate. With the help of then-wife Su Hua, he built Newton into a jewel of a boutique winery at the base of Spring Mountain, just uphill from St. Helena. LVMH acquired a majority stake…

Martine Saunier, who brought the wines of Burgundy’s Henri Jayer and Domaine Leroy and Châteauneuf-du-Pape’s Château Rayas to America as a trailblazing importer, died Feb. 9 from lung cancer. She was 91. Saunier had an exceptional palate for wine, a clear vision and a fierce determination to follow her own path. Born in Paris in 1934, she spent summers in the Mâconnais, the southern-most region of Burgundy, where her aunt had vineyards. As a child, Saunier never missed a harvest and followed the winemaker around the cellar. After studying business, she took a job in public relations with Japan Airlines at its Paris offices. After meeting her future husband, a doctor from San Francisco, she moved to the West Coast of the United States in 1964. Getting a job with…

Peter M.F. Sichel’s life was the stuff of cinematic thrillers, complete with a daring escape from Nazis, tours as a spymaster for the CIA and a respected career as a wine executive and educator. Sichel died Feb. 24. He was 104. Born in 1922, in Mainz, Germany, Sichel grew up in a Jewish family that owned the H. Sichel Söhne wine house. When the Nazi party took control of Germany, his parents left for France. Peter was interning at the Bordeaux office in 1940 when the Germans conquered France, and he was imprisoned. He escaped, traveling through Spain and Portugal before reaching the United States. When the U.S. entered the war, Sichel enlisted and, with his fluency in German, was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the government’s fledging…