Cali Pinot Blindtasting Dinner (checking Eric Asimov's thesis on trend toward greater finesse and lightness)
City Grill, San Francisco, California
Tasted Friday, April 24, 2009 by rjonwine@gmail.com with 1,221 views
Introduction
Eric Asimov's March 10 NY Times articles on Cali Pinot highlighted a trend among some Cali Pinot producers towards picking earlier, in cooler regions, to produce Pinots with greater finesse and lightness than has been the case with much of Cali Pinot produced in recent years. Here are the links: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/dining/11pour.html?_r=1&ref=dining
and http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/pondering-pinots/#more-381
Our gang decided to check out Asimov's thesis--which coincides with what a lot of us have been hearing from and experiencing with favorite producers--by blindtasting through a number of '05s and '06s from producers mentioned in Asimov's article. Asimov listed 17 representative producers. We tried 12 of them at this tasting: Anthill Farms, Arcadian, Au Bon Climat, Calera, Copain, Joseph Swan, Lane Tanner, Littorai, Ojai Vineyard, Peay, Rhys and Rivers-Marie. We also added a producer that has been making Pinots in this vein for decades, that was neglected in the article--Mount Eden--and a wine from one of our buddies and fellow tasters who aims for a similar style, Eric Lundblad's Ladd Cellars. Someone also threw in a Kosta-Browne for comparison.
I think Asimov's thesis was well supported by our sampling. A few of the wines did not show as well as they have for me before. The K-B really stuck out like a sore thumb (and I didn't know until yesterday for sure that it was a K-B, as it had been decanted into a different bottle). A plurality of the group favored the Calera as WOTN, but it wasn't even in my top five. It was consistent with Calera bottlings I've had over the years, and for me the style is overly stemmy. Older bottles I've tried have not convinced me that all that greenness integrates even over several years. My standouts were the Copain, followed by the Rivers-Marie, the Ladd, and the Ojai.
Thanks to Keith for getting us organized, and to Paul for arranging our flights. Jim did an amazing job of guessing which blind sample belonged to which producer--I think he got over half of them right. For our first wine dinner there, City Grill was very accommodating, and the food was good and very reasonably priced.
Flight 1 - Blind White Flight (3 Notes)
We started with a white flight, provided by Steve. The good news was that, for once, the least expensive wine--the Bruno Colin--was the group's favorite. The Hanzell seems shut down.
3-cheese truffled Mac & Cheese
Flight 2 - 1st Pinot Blind Flight (4 Notes)
Flight 3 - 2nd Pinot Blind Flight (4 Notes)
Flight 4 - 3rd Pinot Blind Flight (5 Notes)
Our Peay was, unfortunately, corked. The NZ Pinot that was also thrown into that flight as a back up was also corked on arrival.
Flight 5 - 4th Pinot Blind Flight (4 Notes)
2005 Bruno Colin Chardonnay Bourgogne 91 Points
France, Burgundy, Bourgogne
Light canary yellow color; clean lime and ripe lemon nose; decent tart citrus and mineral palate with a green note; medium finish (group's WOTF)
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2004 Coche-Dury Chardonnay Bourgogne 89 Points
France, Burgundy, Bourgogne
Tart lime nose; concentrated tart quince, tangy deep lime palate; medium finish
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2005 Hanzell Chardonnay 90 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Valley
Light sweet lemon and green apple nose; ripe lime, apple palate with medium acidity and green notes; medium finish 90+ pts. (has shown better in the past, seems to be in a dumb period)
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