Cuvée O Pinot Noir
Sometimes, you just know: This year, the weather, the hand harvest, the timing and temperatures both during fermentation as well as before, you get a feeling, nudge, an epiphany, an educated guess, so you try something different to see if it might contribute to a better overall wine.
Process:
The first time since 2008 I performed an extended post-fermentation maceration which I attribute to Tony Soter who taught me this technique: Once primary fermentation is completed; the conversion of sugars into carbon dioxide, various fruit based esters and alcohols, one would normally drain off the free run and the press off the remaining semi-solids, keeping these two separate for later blending opportunities. But this year I went for the extended post-fermentation maceration. That is a bunch of polysyllabic words for “letting the wine sit in the fermentation vessel long the after it is actually finished." Why do this? Allegedly this allows for tannins to link up and hide their intensity resulting in a long-lived with and yet making the texture smoother.
Impressions:
Aromas of dusty roses, caliche roads, freshly crushed black cherries, sliced black plums and blackberry flowers. Entry is an attack of acid, fruit and a combination of lilac and violet flowers. Mouth is enveloping with encrypted textures hiding bursts of iron, plum pith and sweet oranges (Yes, Oranges) from sumptuous salinity to basalt rocks. So crazy. After an hour resting in a large bowled glass, warm black plums, with thinly sliced kumquats interspersed. New aromas of crushed gravel roads, soil just rained on and freshly turned black earth. On the finish, roasted beets with black plums, combining earthiness with fruitiness. Super fine tannins. In your face age-ability this point in its life.
This is a wine for the ages, I would project another three years before it becomes seamless and it should last twenty years. Gobs of natural acidity and the fermentation manipulated tannins due to an addition twenty-five days of resting on the must AFTER fermentation was completed.
750ml Bottle / 12.9% ABV
Sometimes, you just know: This year, the weather, the hand harvest, the timing and temperatures both during fermentation as well as before, you get a feeling, nudge, an epiphany, an educated guess, so you try something different to see if it might contribute to a better overall wine.
Process:
The first time since 2008 I performed an extended post-fermentation maceration which I attribute to Tony Soter who taught me this technique: Once primary fermentation is completed; the conversion of sugars into carbon dioxide, various fruit based esters and alcohols, one would normally drain off the free run and the press off the remaining semi-solids, keeping these two separate for later blending opportunities. But this year I went for the extended post-fermentation maceration. That is a bunch of polysyllabic words for “letting the wine sit in the fermentation vessel long the after it is actually finished." Why do this? Allegedly this allows for tannins to link up and hide their intensity resulting in a long-lived with and yet making the texture smoother.
Impressions:
Aromas of dusty roses, caliche roads, freshly crushed black cherries, sliced black plums and blackberry flowers. Entry is an attack of acid, fruit and a combination of lilac and violet flowers. Mouth is enveloping with encrypted textures hiding bursts of iron, plum pith and sweet oranges (Yes, Oranges) from sumptuous salinity to basalt rocks. So crazy. After an hour resting in a large bowled glass, warm black plums, with thinly sliced kumquats interspersed. New aromas of crushed gravel roads, soil just rained on and freshly turned black earth. On the finish, roasted beets with black plums, combining earthiness with fruitiness. Super fine tannins. In your face age-ability this point in its life.
This is a wine for the ages, I would project another three years before it becomes seamless and it should last twenty years. Gobs of natural acidity and the fermentation manipulated tannins due to an addition twenty-five days of resting on the must AFTER fermentation was completed.
750ml Bottle / 12.9% ABV
Sometimes, you just know: This year, the weather, the hand harvest, the timing and temperatures both during fermentation as well as before, you get a feeling, nudge, an epiphany, an educated guess, so you try something different to see if it might contribute to a better overall wine.
Process:
The first time since 2008 I performed an extended post-fermentation maceration which I attribute to Tony Soter who taught me this technique: Once primary fermentation is completed; the conversion of sugars into carbon dioxide, various fruit based esters and alcohols, one would normally drain off the free run and the press off the remaining semi-solids, keeping these two separate for later blending opportunities. But this year I went for the extended post-fermentation maceration. That is a bunch of polysyllabic words for “letting the wine sit in the fermentation vessel long the after it is actually finished." Why do this? Allegedly this allows for tannins to link up and hide their intensity resulting in a long-lived with and yet making the texture smoother.
Impressions:
Aromas of dusty roses, caliche roads, freshly crushed black cherries, sliced black plums and blackberry flowers. Entry is an attack of acid, fruit and a combination of lilac and violet flowers. Mouth is enveloping with encrypted textures hiding bursts of iron, plum pith and sweet oranges (Yes, Oranges) from sumptuous salinity to basalt rocks. So crazy. After an hour resting in a large bowled glass, warm black plums, with thinly sliced kumquats interspersed. New aromas of crushed gravel roads, soil just rained on and freshly turned black earth. On the finish, roasted beets with black plums, combining earthiness with fruitiness. Super fine tannins. In your face age-ability this point in its life.
This is a wine for the ages, I would project another three years before it becomes seamless and it should last twenty years. Gobs of natural acidity and the fermentation manipulated tannins due to an addition twenty-five days of resting on the must AFTER fermentation was completed.
750ml Bottle / 12.9% ABV
Since my start in 1998, there have only been a handful of bottlings of the EIEIO Pinot noir designated as Cuvee O, the outstanding, the opulent, the optimal. Blending is not as easy as most might think. Blending of the various vineyards and blocks can take over one year. And most of the time, these blends do not work out to be something compelling enough to be designated the top end “Cuvee O” Pinot noir. At times when I thought I had a blend that would work, by letting it sit in its sampling bottle overnight, it became something else. Not that it was bad, just that it did not qualify to be bottled as Cuvee O. And even my penultimate blend was ultimately changed as when I tried it again, it was perfectly beautiful, but beautiful in the way a perfect glass of water is at times; beautiful, pleasant, pleasing and completely innocuous.
During élevage or the “raising” of the wine in barrel of nineteen months, the wine rested in French oak. The blend is comprised of three once-used, and one three-time used barrels from the Cooperages of DAMY, Taransaud and Francois Freres. The barrels were not moved, racked or stirred during their élevage.
2018 - Darker than my normal style of Pinot noir, this wine is almost brooding in color, still translucent but deeper. Aromatics are more akin to the smell of dusty fruit ripening along a gravel road, of which we have plenty of out here with a seemingly limitless wild plum tree population. First intake shows intense acid, an impassioned combination of blood orange and pomegranate. This wine gets your attention right up front. With acidity comes salivation and flavors like a bowl of blackberries combined with Candy Cap mushrooms and a squeeze of lime intensify your experience. This 2018 vintage blend is made up of two different fermentations: The main part, or approximately 70 percent, is a co-fermentation of Saffron Fields Vineyard’s Pommard of which 100 percent was whole cluster and Maverick Vineyard’s 943 clone, all of which was de-stemmed. During harvest, this 943 or the “Romanée-Conti” Clone of Pinot noir was the fermentation putting off the most intoxicating aromatics and as well as the darkest in color, it was a monster. The remaining 30 percent is 100 percent whole cluster from old vine Wind Hill Vineyard Pommard. This site is fairly cool and ripens last which in-turn allows the grapes to retain great acidity. Aromatics lean toward red cherries and red plums with road dust.