WTN: Six CA and OR pinots

[Jenise]

Testing pinots this week for various reasons.

2013 Meiomi Pinot Noir California
Stewed red fruit and vanilla typical of Wagner/Belle Glos pinots start the show, celery and sea salt join the midpalate, then comes a maple-sweet finish. Not a pinot I'd ever buy for myself, but I can see why it has been so successful with a certain clientele. The neighborhood group will love it.

2013 Chad Pinot Noir Reserve Carneros
Rich and classic Carneros flavors of bing cherry with cola notes. Good tannins--a serious pinot. Drinks well now especially with an hour of air time to open things up, but it seems to have the structure to be an 8+ year wine. Bought on spec from Wine Access for only $20--what a score. My second favorite of this group. In fact, I bought six bottles thinking I'd feed them to the neighborhood group, but instead we're keeping it.

2012 Masút Pinot Noir Mendocino
Another serious pinot and my favorite of this group. Decanting for one hour (needed) coaxed out concentrated cherry fruit, plum and fresh fig with a tad of cola and some kind of exotic wood I can't put a name to (not oak!). Lots of taut character and style, an IPOB style wine with the stuffing to age 8-10 years. 13.9% alc.

2012 Foris Pinot Noir Maple Ranch Rogue Valley
Modern Quad F style--(fined/filtered/fruit forward): floral, cherry and plum fruit, tame spice, polished, balanced but softer with moderate acid and tannins, extremely pleasant right out of the gate. Drink, don't cellar.

2012 Edna Valley Pinot Noir
Concentrated purple color, tons of oak--a perfect pinot for the New World cab-only drinkers on a budget who hate pinot noir. Fortunately, that's not me.

2012 Steelhead Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast
Delightfully minus the oak on the Edna; a lighter style but it's sweet, and I mean tasting less of fruit than simple-syrup/manufactured/chaptalized sweetness. If you need something to serve your mother-in-law on Thanksgiving, this is your wine. Otherwise, pass.

I've never been fond of the Belle Glos Meiomi but have liked the Clark & Telephone in the past and also the 2011 Dairyman. Today, at a retail wine shop, I tasted the 2013 Belle Glos Las Alturas, Dairyman and Clark & Telephone (along with Ayres Perspective and an Arterberry Maresh from Oregon.) My favorite was the Las Alturas which had an intriguing aroma and smoky and peppery notes along with dark cherries. I couldn't really judge the Clark & Telephone which was the weightiest of the three from Belle Glos--I thought it needed some cellar time to develop. I didn't like the 2013 Dairyman as well as the 2011 vintage. I have a bottle of the 2012 Dairyman in the refrigerator now to open in the next week or two.
Chad and Masut are both new names to me. Did you find them in a local retail store?

[Jenise]

Best I can recall, the Belle Glos' that I've tasted were coincidentally all Clark and Telephone. I had some, friends have opened others. What they shared, regardless of age or vintage, was a strong malolactic presence that tasted to me of sour milk. BLECH. (Based on those experiences I would absolutely eye something called 'Dairyman' with great suspicion!) And I've avoided the brand ever since.

The Chad: I can't recall the wording of the offer, but I recall having a sense that it was a back-door bottling and the label, I have to admit, looks like it was printed at Kinko's. Anyway, not something I'd expect to see on a shelf somewhere, and not something I deserve, based on such scant evidence of its goodness, to hold in the regard I do after tasting it the other night. But it definitely lives up to the hype that caught my interest.

Masut on the other hand is a real winery. Probably small production/boutique--I've never seen it before--but it's the real deal and nails the Burgundian/Mendocino-cool-climate thing. Both, btw, I purchased for the neighborhood tasting--and decided to keep. There's a third I also bought for the neighborhood tasting and now don't dare open a bottle lest I should want it, too.

Always liked the Masut. Big and chewy.

I seldom mention this but could the wood/not-oak possibly be a very muted sandalwood. Or sort of a garrigue character. I sometimes get that from Mendo, and from Masut.

[Jenise]

Always liked the Masut. Big and chewy.

I seldom mention this but could the wood/not-oak possibly be a very muted sandalwood. Or sort of a garrigue character. I sometimes get that from Mendo, and from Masut.

So they've been around awhile? It was a new name to me. Sandalwood might nail it--not quite incense, but something you might smell in a Buddhist temple. This one was 'big', as in concentrated pinot flavor, but not dense or heavy. 'Dense' would be the Edna Valley.

Always liked the Masut. Big and chewy.

I seldom mention this but could the wood/not-oak possibly be a very muted sandalwood. Or sort of a garrigue character. I sometimes get that from Mendo, and from Masut.

So they've been around awhile? It was a new name to me. Sandalwood might nail it--not quite incense, but something you might smell in a Buddhist temple. This one was 'big', as in concentrated pinot flavor, but not dense or heavy. 'Dense' would be the Edna Valley.

Yeah, sandalwood/incense. That's it.

Remember I used to live in Sonoma and worked a lot in Mendo. Bobby Fetzer and his sons started Masut back in 1996-97 as a vineyard. It stayed under the radar for quite a while; had some ups and downs. Organic/sustainable, as most of the Fetzer progeny did.