Pinot Days 2010 - Santa Lucia Highlands, Santa Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley Seminar
Fort Mason, San Francisco, California
Tasted Saturday, June 26, 2010 by rjonwine@gmail.com with 737 views
Introduction
This was my fourth straight year of attending the Pinot Days Saturday seminars. These annual seminars are a good opportunity to sit with a winemaker or two and compare notes on wines we're tasting, to hear from winemakers or winery representatives about our 16 wines, and to sample a number of wines that I might not otherwise have a chance to try. There were three of these seminars this year, and this one was the first of the day this past Saturday.
The format was the one that has evolved and stuck in the last few years: four flights of four wines each, all blind. You taste for 8 to 10 minutes, and then Lisa Rigisich (who along with husband Steven produces the Pinot Days events) reveals the wines in the flight, starting with the one on your left, one by one, asking the winemaker or winery representative on hand to tell us something about that wine, or their winemaking philosophy. Midway through that round of winemaker comments, before you know what the last wine or two is, you're dumping out your wines so that the volunteers who pour for the seminar can set up your next round of four glasses, and so on. Which means you're spending about two minutes or so per wine, getting some sense of it, but it's not hanging around long enough for you to let it open up or evolve in the glass. In my case, I spend the time jotting down some notes and forcing myself to give a rating, try to figure out which wine it might be (probably one of four on the pre-printed list if they've told us the flight's theme in advance), and take pictures of the winery reps when they speak, and the flights of wine, for this blog. Phew! Well, it keeps me busy for two hours, and I tend to learn something about a producer or two that I didn't know much about before. And the whole thing is pretty well organized, I enjoy hearing from the winemakers, and tend to enjoy a lot of the wines too.
This and the other seminars were supposed to feature the 2008 vintage, but not all winemakers stick to the plan, so a few bring different vintages, but each seminar does, nonetheless, give a pretty good sense of that region's experience of the vintage. In the case of the multiply plagued 2008 vintage, it's a wonder that wine got made at all in many places. The Central Coast had frosts, continued drought, serious rains and thunderstorms during growing season, fires and then more frost in October. Some of the wines in this seminar were weaker than I've had from the same producers in prior years, presumably largely as a result of the difficult vintage, while many of the wines were actually surprisingly good, all things considered. On the whole, though, it's a lighter vintage, with higher acidities and a lot more green notes (which are also due to an increasing trend of experimentation with some degree of whole clusters in the fermentation).
My strong favorite in tasting through the following 16 wines blind was the '08 Lucia Garys' Vineyard from Pisoni, followed by the '07 Morgan Double L. I also admired the '08 Rusack Solomon Hills (which continued the good showing of Rusacks from the Pinot Days trade tasting held the day before), the '06 Arcadian Fiddlestix, the '08 Pelerin Rosella's and the '08 Clos Pepe Vigneron Select. The Santa Lucia Highlands flight was the strongest flight of the four. The most amusing comments were from Peter Cargasacchi, as usual, who claimed, among other things, that the grapes for his '07 Estate had been "destemmed by virgins, who then rolled the berries down their thighs and crushed them." In the Q&A period, when asked whether those were female or male virgins, he jokingly admitted they were young boys. ;-) Wes Hagen was very articulate, as usual, about what drew him to making wine (he was inspired as a child by how animated and interesting his parents' dinner guests got after drinking for awhile) and about how pretty much disastrous the '08 vintage was at Clos Pepe.
I applaud all the winemakers for managing to produce something out of '08 (at least those who showed something from '08), and I hope many of them will consider using less new oak and whole cluster in the future, especially in such a relatively weak vintage.
Peter Cargasacchi
Wes Hagen
Flight 1 - Santa Maria Valley Flight (4 Notes)
Flight 2 - Santa Rita Hills Flight (4 Notes)
Flight 3 - Santa Lucia Highlands Flight (4 Notes)
Closing
site of seminar, in Landmark Building D at Fort Mason Center
2008 Rusack Pinot Noir Solomon Hills Vineyard 91 Points
USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Maria Valley
Dark cherry red color with pale meniscus; nice cherry, raspberry, baked cherry nose with a touch of heat; tasty, tart cherry, raspberry palate with good acidity; medium finish
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2008 Crū Winery Pinot Noir Appellation Series Santa Maria Valley 85 Points
USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Maria Valley
Dark cherry red color; oak, rhubarb nose; oaky, rhubarb, tart cherry, baked rhubarb palate; medium finish (20% whole cluster; 667 clone)
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2008 Hug Cellars Pinot Noir Rancho Ontiveros Vineyard 83 Points
USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Barbara County
Dark red color; green, dill, camphor nose; tight camphor, forest floor palate with green notes; medium finish (100% whole cluster; 100% new oak)
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2008 Ranchos de Ontiveros Pinot Noir native9 88 Points
USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Maria Valley
Medium red color with pale meniscus; tart cranberry, very tart red fruit nose; tart cranberry, tart red fruit palate with medium acidity and grip; medium-plus finish 88+ pts. (clones 1A, 2A, 113, 114, Swan, Benedict, Pommard; 100% whole cluster; 60% new French oak)
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