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California Pinot Noir Page 1
CALIFORNIA PINOT NOIRS

Having its home in both Burgundy and Champagne, Pinot Noir
has been in California for many years, probably since the late 1800s. It is a fussy
and finicky grape variety, prone to genetic changes which means there are many
"clones" of Pinot Noir.
The grape tends to produce wines which have much less color than Cabernet or Zinfandel,
for example. I have seen, in many tastings, wines which are color-poor, but,
curiously, have the most intense fragrance. Tasters are frequently swayed by
the color and appearance of a wine and cannot credit a weakly colored wine with having
more intensity to its "nose" than deeper colored/less fragrant wines.
Another feature of Pinot Noir is it displays character according to its vineyard
site.
The differences in Cabernet Sauvignon grown in fairly close proximities might
not be detectable to the average consumer, but Pinot Noir grown in neighboring
vineyard sites can be dramatically different.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, we'd routinely hear how Pinot Noir was
not well-suited to cultivation in California and the wines did not resemble
French red Burgundy at all.
Yet it was not uncommon for California winemakers to "fortify" their Pinot
Noirs with something such as Petite Sirah or Zinfandel. The wines had great color and, perhaps, a
bit more body and tannin, but the peppery Petite Sirah or spice notes of
Zinfandel detracted or overwhelmed the subtle
and delicate cherry-like Pinot Noir fruit.
Curiously, in France's Burgundy, it was
said vintners or negociants routinely beefed up their wines with some deeper red from the
south of France (or Algeria, which was a major wine-exporting region
once-upon-a-time!). A Burgundy house was discovered (a few
years ago) to have been selling wines illegally blended with stronger red wine
from outside the appellation. (Quel surprise!)
The temptation is great to make beefier wines, as critics and their audiences,
often find "bigger is better."
I am certain some local vintners still adulterate (or "enhance," depending upon
one's perspective) their Pinot Noirs with darker, stronger varieties. One prominent
winery owner chided me for even asking such a question, though he would not declare
that his wines were 100% Pinot Noir!
It seems that Pinot Noir varies according to clone, soil, exposure, climate and
we haven't even discussed vinification. Many Burgundy winemakers will tell
you their wine does not reflect the Pinot Noir grape, but instead the grape
reflects the terroir.
Some producers will tell you the juice
should be kept at a cold temperature (which inhibits fermentation) and macerated on the
skins for a week before fermentation is initiated. Other winemakers say this is a
recipe for disaster. Some winemakers claim to ferment with the stems, while others
say this is not the way to make good Pinot Noir.
As you can understand, controversy abounds!
The
aromas of Pinot Noir vary as a result of so many of the factors enumerated above. We
prefer to find bright fruit aromas, reminiscent of cherry or strawberry. We like a
bit of vanillin from the oak.
Some Pinots have a gamey quality to them. In his
book entitled "BURGUNDY" by Anthony Hanson, this expert writes "Great
Burgundy smells of shit. It is most surprising, but something the French recognized
long ago, a sent la merde and a sent le purin being common
expressions on the Côte. Not always, of course; but frequently there is a
smell of decaying matter, vegetable or animal, about them. This is nothing
new."
Uh, well, we prefer the cherry and berry notes, thank you!
Years ago, there was a school of thought which felt that California was too hot for Pinot Noir. Oregon enjoyed
some notoriety as experts wrangled over which area was producing the best West Coast
Pinots. An east coast tasting, written about in the New York Times (some years ago,
now) said the favored wines were Oregon and Burgundy when tasted with the labels exposed.
When the wines were poured for a blind-tasting, California won.
Today's wine critics are having an impact on Pinot Noir production. Since
the dynamics of most blind tastings (and tastings that are not
"blind") is to find the biggest and most intense wines, Pinot Noirs of
elegance and refinement are marked down as thin and light, while wines with
Syrah colors and Cabernet tannins are now often garnering the highest scores.
Pinot Noir winemakers are, it seems, interested in picking Pinot Noir as ripe as
possible. One vintner told me the trend is to harvest the fruit when it's
close to 16 to 18 percent "potential alcohol." Then water is
added to the juice and the fermentation ensues. I am not sure what
benefits are obtained by picking at this high level of sugar, but it seems to be
popular amongst the young winemaking crowd.
The high ratings encourage consumers to buy these sorts of wines and it encourages
winemakers to produce this style of Pinot.
We have noticed the
alcohol levels of Pinot Noir are often pushing 14% to 15%, sometimes even
more! It's not about the alcohol, though. It's about
"balance." Some wines can still be balanced and delicious at a
high octane level, while others can be totally out of whack.
We have had some Pinots which were made from such over-ripe fruit,
the wines resemble late-picked Zinfandel. One even has scored in the
mid-90s from a prominent critic despite the wine having little in common with
Pinot Noir.
There's an awful Pinot that receives high praise from various
publications. We've had four vintages in tastings and the wine routinely
finishes in last place. All we can figure is the winery sends in samples
of someone else's wine (probably French Burgundy, since it is often described as
being reminiscent of Grand Cru level wines) and they bottle plonk to sell to
consumers. If the
wine they send to critics is the same as what they sell, this calls into
question the expertise of those writing about wine.
Anyone who claims to be a Pinot aficionado and who tastes California wines such as
The Ojai Vineyard, Dehlinger, Patz & Hall, Walter Hansel, Rochioli, Merry
Edwards, Kistler (etc.) who says these are not good wines simply doesn't
understand the subject.
SOME PINOTS WE LIKE:


- ALMA ROSA
Richard
Sanford is one of the pioneers in Santa Barbara County wine history.
He teamed with a botanist friend, Michael Benedict, back in the 1970s and planted
vineyards in the region that's today known as "Santa Rita Hills"
where vineyards were not part of the normal landscape.
Sanford had been introduced to a French Burgundy and on his return from
military service following the Vietnam war, he poked around California in
hopes of doing something agricultural. The pair started a winery called Sanford &
Benedict which lasted some years before the partnership was on the rocks.
Mr. Benedict is still around, but apparently the two are not on good terms.
The Sanford & Benedict Pinot Noir from their first vintage, 1976, was
exceptional and showed California could produce a wine of distinction and
complexity.
Back in the 1970s we heard that E & J Gallo "Hearty Burgundy"
was a more noteworthy wine than most Pinot Noirs of that era.
Really?
After a number of vintages the Sanford & Benedict winery ceased to exist
and Sanford had solely his name on the sign of a facility he designed
himself.
But again he found himself in financial difficulties and he got financing
from the Terlato family at what was then the Paterno Wine Company. The
details are sketchy thanks to some contractual constraints, but eventually
Sanford was booted out of the winery that has his name on the
building. In fact, for years the website of the Sanford
winery made no mention of the fellow for whom the place is
named!
(We noticed recently they do mention Richard Sanford!)
We understand there were major disagreements concerning Sanford's insistence
upon organic farming. His steadfastness to this ideal did not,
apparently, sit well with the Terlato/Paterno folk who had bailed him out of
some financial distress. He was passionate about environmentalism and
farming responsibly.
-

Once the partners owned shares of Sanford's wine business, the devil was in the
front door, so-to-speak.
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Richard Sanford, organic viticulturalist
Sanford, in 1985, then launched a new brand called Alma Rosa. We had their
first two Pinot Noirs in a blind-tasting and the wines finished 1st and
2nd! I especially liked the La Encantada Vineyard bottling.
The wines have been reasonably solid over the years, though they are not
the most flashy wines in the market.
Currently we have the 2020 Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir in the shop.
This is a medium-bodied Pinot Noir displaying a mildly cherryish note with
a suggestion of pomegranate-like fruit. They used some new French
oak to mature the wine and there's a whiff of wood in the
background. Nicely drinkable presently and it can likely be held a
couple of years.

We tasted a 2006 vintage La Encantada Pinot (in 2016). The wine was
bottled with a screw-cap closure, one of the earliest "fine wines"
to be offered in this format. The wine was a delight. Very good
fragrances and still youthful, but developed. This was a pleasant
surprise.
Currently in stock: 2020 ALMA ROSA "Santa Rita
Hills" SALE $34.99
2011 ALMA ROSA Santa Rita Hills "La
Encantada" PINOT NOIR Sold Out
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- BELLE GLOS
Maybe
you're a fan of Caymus Cabernets and have wondered what Caymus Pinot
Noir would taste like.
Well, I can tell you Caymus used to make Pinot Noir from Rutherford-grown
fruit many years ago. They even made a Pinot Noir Blanc called
"Eye of the Partridge." What fruit they didn't use
themselves was sold off to Inglenook.
Nobody paid much attention to
Pinot back then. Pinot Noir grown in Rutherford! Never mind that
the fruit had short hang time and ripened quickly...all people paid
attention to was "Brix" (a measure of the sugar content of the
grapes) as though that was some indication of quality.
((Producers who continue to value sugar without regard to flavors,
physiological development of the grapes and acidity are missing the boat, in
our view.))
Chuck Wagner must have never gotten rid of the "bug" to make Pinot
Noir. He has about 150 acres in Santa Maria, just north of Santa
Barbara. He's also working on a Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir
"project."
The Pinot Noir appears not under his Caymus or Mer Soleil labels, but as
"Belle Glos." This is named after Chuck's Mom, Lorna Belle
Glos-Wagner. One of her grandfathers was a grape grower who had a
vineyard on Howell Mountain, while the other was a winemaker at Inglenook in
the early 1900's!
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Belle Glos Pinots certainly have a following, though we wonder what
enhancements they've made to produce wines which have uncharacteristically
dark color.
(And you know, to label the wine as Pinot Noir, winemakers have a 25%
fudge-factor in place, so fortifying the wine with something darker and more
potent is allowed.)
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An Italian friend has a term for this sort of winemaking :
Siliconato.
Having seen the direction of this wine and the Wagner's other bottlings, we
no longer have Belle Glos and other Wagner family wines.
They are available by special order, if you like, but we prefer to devote
shelf space to brands which we find to have more classic elements of Pinot
Noir.
**********
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They
had introduced an entry-level bottling and this took the brand name "Meiomi."
The name is said to be a Wappo and/or Yuki word referring to the
"coast." And the grapes are sourced from coastal vineyards
ranging from Santa Barbara, Monterey and north in Sonoma.
It's an appealing little wine for neophytes, being fruity with cherry cola sorts of
aromas and flavors...best served at cool cellar temp...not a wine for aging,
as it's best consumed in its youth. It doesn't exactly taste like
Pinot Noir, though.
The Meiomi brand was sold off during the summer of 2015, as the
Constellation company acquired the label for a cool $315 Million.
No
acreage.
No winery.
Just the brand name and the label.
Wow...good luck to Constellation and congrats to Joe Wagner for hitting the
jackpot!
We wonder how Constellation will make this work.
{And, now a few years later, we see the price of Meomi Pinot Noir is lower than
when young Mr. Wagner owned the brand...Constellation has done a good job of
devaluing the brand and running it into the ground. The marketing is
curious as consumers can find the brand in chain stores retailing for a lower
price than retailers can purchase it at wholesale! One chain store allows
customers to post reviews and we read many negative evaluations of the
wine. This is not surprising.}
- Currently in stock:
BELLE GLOS PINOT NOIRS Available by Special Order
MEIOMI Pinot Noir Available by Special Order
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RAMSAY
- The Ramsay label comes to us from winemaker Kent Rasmussen, a fellow who
seems to easily evade radar detection with wines of his eponymous label
and those bearing the name of his wife, musician Cecilia
Ramsay.
We currently have a wonderful 2020 vintage Pinot Noir made of fruit from
Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties.
This is listed at a mere 13.5% alcohol, a delight in this world of
brain-busting fruit bomb California wines. The aromas are clearly
those of Pinot Noir fruit, with cherry and red berry fruit notes
prominent. Add to this there's a touch of forest floor
earthiness. It's a medium-bodied, easily chillable red wine.
Maybe this can be cellared a few years, but given its youthful charm and
sensible price tag, we suspect bottles will come and go.
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Currently in stock: 2020 RAMSAY North Coast PINOT NOIR $15.99
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COCHON
- This is a little enterprise called Odisea Wine Company owned by
winemaker Adam Webb who started out his wine career in sales and
marketing.
On a lark, with a friend, he made a Grenache wine from Amador County fruit
and there's no turning back now! The "focus" is on
making wines with a tip of the cap to France's Alsace, Burgundy and the Rhône,
as well as those from the Iberian Peninsula. A broad focus, indeed.
We've often had a terrific Rhône-styled red blend in the shop but
recently found the 2019 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir to be remarkably
good and sensibly-priced.
The wine is from the Dutton family's "Perry Ranch" near the town
of Occidental in the Green Valley area of Sonoma County. The
vineyard used to be called Keefer Ranch when it had been owned by Marcy
Keefer some years ago. Prior to that site having vineyards, it was
carpeted with apple orchards.
Webb destemmed half of the fruit and left half as whole clusters, a
popular technique with many Pinot Noir producers. There was a 5 day
pre-fermentation "cold soak" before warming it up to allow the
indigenous yeast on the skins of those grapes to get busy and vinify the
juice.
For two weeks they punched down the cap as the skins are pushed to the top
of the fermentation by the CO2. The punch-down regimen was twice
daily. Once the fermentation was finished, the wine was racked into
French oak cooperage, with 40% of the barrels being brand new.
This is a remarkably pretty wine and the character of Pinot Noir is unmistakable.
You'll find lots of bright red cherry fruit and there's a mildly woodsy
framing from the oak. It's youthful and immediately drinkable.
Best at cellar temperature.
What a wine for a modest price!
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Currently in stock: 2019 COCHON Russian River
"Dutton - Perry Ranch" PINOT NOIR $29.99

Winemaker Adam Webb
- MORE PINOT
NOIRS
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