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Featured Wine
2003 Haynes Vineyard Pinot Noir
Released
December 2007, 173 cases produced
Internet-Direct Price: $60.00 / 750 mL bottle
Our 2003 Haynes Vineyard Pinot Noir shares the great structure and natural acidity of our other two releases from the vintage. But compared to the wines we made from the younger Dijon-clone vineyards, the old-vine "heritage" budwood selection at Haynes has given us a wine of surreal silken elegance.
As is usual with our Haynes wines, this one was the slowest of our three Pinots to develop in bottle. At release it is still a bit gangly and disjointed, but we know that the Haynes Pinot comes together with the capability for long aging. We expect our 2003 Haynes to be among the longest-lived in our long experience with this extraordinary vineyard.
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Tasting Notes
Vintage Chart
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Featured Wine
2003 Los Carneros Pinot Noir
Released
August 2007, 172 cases produced
Internet-Direct Price: $60.00 / 750 mL bottle
Twenty-aught-three was a winemaker's vintage - it gave us low-yield, perfectly ripe crops of Pinot Noir that retained more of the grape's natural acidity than any vintage in memory. These factors came together with our craft to deliver a group of wines that are highly structured, and still very closed in even after 2-1/2 years in barrel and 3 years in bottle.
This Carneros bottling — like our other two Pinot Noirs from the 2003 vintage — is one of the most monolithic wines we have produced since the phenomenal 1992 vintage. The 2003 vintage yielded some of the most structured Pinot Noir in our experience — angular and waiting to develop finesse — promising to reward long cellaring but engaging to drink now.
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Tasting Notes
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Featured Wine
2003 Nicholson Ranch Vineyard Pinot Noir
Released
October 2007, 152 cases produced
Internet-Direct Price: $60.00 / 750 mL bottle
Our Nicholson Ranch Vineyard Pinot Noir is the second release, and smallest production, of the three wines we made in 2003. In the Nicholson we have found a stark contrast to our first release from 2003, the Los Carneros Pinot. The Nicholson is all bright cherry, balsam and sunlight, where the Carneros is darker, briary and earthy.
The amazing thing is that the vineyards are only a few miles apart, about the same age, and with similar Dijon clones, rootstocks, trellising and farming. The yields were nearly identical, and the winemaking was identical, right down to the yeast used and the barrel mix the two wines were raised in.
The differences are due to the soil - shallow sand and ash at Nicholson vs. deep clay loam at Carneros - and climate: warmer at Nicholson, windier at Carneros. These wines definitely show their terroir.
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Tasting Notes
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