Don's Gillette's Weekly Wine Blog
Weekly musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Check back here each week for Don's latest thoughts on various wine-related topics. Read Don's full bio...
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The Day After Pinot Days - Part One
Yesterday was Pinot Days in San Francisco. Something like 400 different Pinot Noir bottlings were poured at Fort Mason Center, and seven of us took on the task of sorting them out. I joined coworkers, Zoe and James, and my old friend Mendel (in the business for 25 years and a frequent judge at wine events), along with NVWE expatriates, Cory and Adam, and Adam's sweetie, Tammy. All of us avid Pinot lovers.
I brought my own "cheat-sheet," reproduced the attending winery list, with annotations for the bottlings I hoped to taste, most of which were as yet unreleased. James joined us at the early "must-stops" and then went off on his own to concentrate on new producers. Mendel also eventually went his own way, as he brokers more than a dozen of the attending producers and didn't want to miss any of his own favorites.
Chasseur was one of a dozen tables of special interest to us, and among that group was bringing the largest number of exciting new Pinots (two as a favor to NVWE), so it was our first stop. It proved to be my own favorite table, its offerings closely followed, in my estimation, by those of Dutton-Goldfield, Russian Hill and Dutton Estate.
Bill Hunter, winemaker and owner of Chasseur, poured five different vineyard-designated 2005 Pinots, including the splendid Freestone Station, which I had enjoyed two months earlier. My conversations with Bill had led me to assume that the Sylvia's bottling would be tight and might be hard to evaluate at this point. It was in fact, absolutely magnificent and wonderfully expressive, in contrast to the much tighter seeming, Freestone Station. So much for evaluating young Pinots.
Chasseur's new Sexton vineyard bottling (other wineries who get some of this fruit label it as Pratt vineyard) was an explosion of sweet cherries, pomegranate, red raspberry and rose. Under the table, Bill had a bottle each of his rarest Pinots. The Twin Hills layered sweet red plums and Mr. Lincoln roses with Oriental spice, while the 24-case production Blank Road bottling was super intense, stuffed full of red cherry and red licorice, with savory accents of dried orange and pink peppercorns. These last two will be available from the winery exclusively when released.
End of Part One...