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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2007 Sonoma Pinot Noir: In search of a great harvest [Part One]
There has been a steady murmur from winemakers up and down our state about the 2007 Pinots. If early enthusiasm is any kind of a marker, this is the perfect vintage. We naturally have an interest in the accuracy of such rumors and have been anxious to investigate them. On March 22nd, a cloudless seventy-two degree day, James Jackson and I, along with NVWE alumni Adam Werner and Cory Declusin headed north to investigate.
A perfect vintage for Cabernet denotes something quite different from an ideal one for Pinot. Cabernets from great vintages have more sheer power, better focus, more depth, more intensity, bigger tannins and are of altogether grander scale than Cabs made in years that are merely excellent. In such a year, Cabernet can produce majestic wines even from young vines. Great vintage Cabs are wines that you can stand back and look up at.
The perfect Pinot vintage will produce wines that are truly seamless and endlessly seductive. Wines that possess wonderful clarity and exotic depth, along with splendid mouth-feel. In such wines, fruit acidity looses its citric edge, but its zest is retained, being subsumed into the other elements of flavor and texture. The result is a wave of scent and taste that pulls you into the wine.
Pinots made from older vines have an extra dimension of structure and significantly more depth, so they hit even grander heights as they mature. I have come to believe that the primary quality differences between the best California Pinots and their French counterparts are vine age, and the expertise the grower gains as he grows old, working those vines.
One of the things I expect to find in Pinot from a great vintage is an impression of "grip". This is an old-fashioned word, which I personally define as the mouth-feel a wine has when the tannins are dense, yet fully integrated into the texture and flavor profile. In Pinots with grip, the tannins seem to have grown-up in support of the even richer fruit, rather than been added by winemaking decision. The tannin adds weight and is clearly noticeable, but it never intrudes on the forward-moving wave of fruit by clipping the finish, or otherwise blunting the impression of elegance. The mouth-feel of such Pinot strikes me as "sinewy" or full of "sap".
Four and a half stops
We made three stops in the Russian River Valley and one in the Sonoma Coast, spending our first hour and a half drinking Pinot with Jennifer Halleck and winemaker Rick Davis at Halleck Winery. We tasted from 11 barrels of Jennifer's 2007 crop, followed by a 2 barrel sampling of Rick's own 2007 Calstar Pinot.
Chasseur's Bill Hunter surprised us with a stand-up lunch, which fortified us for the three hours we spent tapping 5 of his 2007 & 2006 Chardonnay barrels, 16 of his 2007 Pinot barrels and enjoying his three 2006 vineyard-designated Pinot bottlings. Bill is releasing only those three from 2006, after offering five in 2005. He could conceivably market as many as eleven from 2007, a vintage he is ecstatic about.
At Benovia, our host Bob Mosby, poured his line-up of recently bottled 2006 Pinots, along with a 2007 Pinot Rose and a 2006 Zio Toni vineyard Chardonnay. This was a long-delayed visit, as I have been eagerly anticipating the debut of Benovia Pinot for almost three years.
Our last visit was in Petaluma, part of the Sonoma Coast AVA, at a vineyard located south of the RRV, near US Highway 101. Kastania's vineyard's owners, Hoot (note the owl on the label) and Linda Smith used to sell their Pinot grapes. Since 2005 they have marketed two bottlings of their own as well, and had the good sense to hire Leslie Cisneros (winemaker at Arista) to help make them. Kastania's bottled 2006s and barrel 2007s, and a tiny production 2005 Meritage, rounded out our tasting day.
Next week, Part Two:
What the Wines said about 2007
Posted by Don on March 24, 2008 1:08 PM | Permalink
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