Browse Tag

pinot noir

Fat pants

[vineyard]Grosjean 2005 Pinot Noir (Vallée d’Aoste) – Stumbles and tumbles out of the bottle, showing a clumsy, almost sticky, light berry aroma with zingy acidity and a lot of disjointed seams of minerality. But as it airs it coalesces, melding fruit and stone, wrapping its structure about itself, and broadening the complexity of its finish. By the final glass, it’s a rather extraordinary study in the interplay of grape and soil. The lesson, I guess, is patience. (2/10)

Hoyas

[bill easton]Easton 2008 Pinot Noir Duarte-Georgetown (Sierra Foothills) – 14.2%. Despite positive verbiage on the label and the accompanying tech sheet (this is a free sample from the winemaker), I’m dubious. OK, pinot noir may have a history in the Sierras, but I suspect there must be a reason it doesn’t have a present. Certainly it would be an easier sell than the ubiquitous syrah, wouldn’t it? Well, anyway, first impressions don’t challenge my predispositions, with a vinyl, overworked quality to the sappy red fruit. There’s acid, and there’s minerality, but neither one works pleasantly towards a pleasant wholeness. So I leave the bottle alone for a while. One day becomes two, and two become three, and then I revisit. At which point I’m forced to walk back some of my criticisms, because the plastic element has disappeared, the structure has integrated, and the fruit is far more appealing than it was on the first day. There’s still minerality, and now there’s balance, and so now one wonders if there might be ageability. Is it a great pinot? No. Neither the Russian River Valley, nor the Central Coast, need quake in their boots (I’m not sure the Anderson Valley, for all its qualities, can quite afford boots yet). But it’s interesting, it’s markedly different, it’s from a trustworthy producer, and…well, who really knows? Worth a revisit, but mind the pop-and-pour mentality, because it doesn’t work here. (2/10)

Mellot yellot

[bottle]Mellot 2003 Sancerre Rouge En Grand Champs (Loire) – Red cherry fruit, somewhat sticky and confected, drapes like an overweight cat over the palate’s lap. There’s a lot more to this wine, especially in an earthen realm, but the sheer mass of the jammy, very nearly dead fruit is impossible to get past. There’s tannin, but not as much as one often fears from a 2003, and I have to say that this is better than most. Still doesn’t mean I want to drink it. (1/10)

Gouges airs

Gouges 1998 Nuits-St-Georges Les Chênes Carteaux “1er Cru” (Burgundy) – Great galloping thunderstorms of sludgy tannin greet the unwary explorer, but after an hour – or three – there’s actually a slowly-maturing Burgundy in here somewhere. Gritty reddish-black aromatics are layered with grayish-black earth, but always there’s that dense tannin. (1/10)

Lights

[vineyard]Fromm “La Strada” 2002 Pinot Noir (Marlborough) – Perhaps the always-fearsome structure is beginning to weaken, or maybe there’s just bottle-variation here, because the dark, moody, truculent fruit is more accessible than usual, and the wine’s youthful aromatics have suddenly reasserted themselves. Thus, a wine that used to smell like pinot but feel like tannat begins to veer away from a stage in which it more closely resembled the latter. Frankly, this is pretty enjoyable, though one has to like filo-esque layers of tannin. (12/09)

Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Ampeau

Ampeau 1989 Savigny-les-Beaune (Burgundy) – The pulse and throb of subsurface earth provides a foundation for a deep, glowering wine hinting at both animal and berry in equal measure, and both in the best possible sense. It’s maturing, for certain, and the beautiful aromatics one desires from aged Burgundy are already in evidence, but I don’t sense any hurry in the wine, and so cannot recommend any sort of panicked rush to open what one might own. A very, very pleasant wine. (12/09)

Raspberry beret

Faiveley 1993 Mercurey La Framboisière (Burgundy) – Very tannic when uncorked, and while this fades somewhat over the course of the evening, it never recedes enough to bring the wine into full balance. Despite that, the fruit…faded for the first half-hour or so, but making a gradual recovery familiar to fans of aging red Burgundy…is fairly dark and purple-toned. What it isn’t is very strong or fleshy, so it’s hard for me to judge if it’s going to last until something more aromatically mature develops, or whether it’s just fading. What I do know is that this bottle will likely never find balance with its tannin. And here’s an important caveat: the owner of this bottle (not me) thinks that there’s a possibility it experienced some minor heat effects at an earlier stage, so the above descriptors may have little or nothing to do with an intact bottle. (12/09)

Hom hom hom

Bretz 2005 Bechtolsheimer Homberg Spätburgunder Rosé Eiswein 048 08 (Rheinhessen) – The pong of botrytis wrapped in silk flowers, strawberry candy, and layers upon layers of eventually unbearable sweetness. There’s big acidity, but nothing can save this wine from a fate likely to resemble a Jolly Rancher. (12/09)

Gevrey Sinclair

Jadot 2006 Gevrey-Chambertin (Burgundy) – Surprisingly harmonious at this stage and given the in-your-face nature of the structure. But harmony there is, which I suppose bodes well. Soil is rich brown and light dusk, fruit is fulsome and berried, and both tannin and acidity are hard to miss. At the right price, this could be a solid choice. (8/09)

Strada sphere

Fromm “La Strada” 2002 Pinot Noir (Marlborough) – As with previous bottles, somewhat at war with its structure. The tannin is layered and ripe, but heavy for the wine (which is darker and more brooding than many pinots, and certainly almost all other Marlborough pinots), and even the usual counterpoint of fat doesn’t quite cut through the muscle. I don’t know if this will hold long enough for the structure to abate, and so my inclination is to drink up over the short term. All this warning and layering of caveats aside, the wine’s dark berries, earth, and autumnal hardwood aromas are still present and powerful. (8/09)