It was a great tasting, and as usual, Jamie is a firehose of knowledge, information and opinion, as to the subjects of the tasting and many other things as well. It was a great conversation, connection and learning experience.
My notes (always sucks to have to go after Frankie in these things, but you snooze, you lose):
2019 Kutch Bohan. This is a feminine wine with a lighter hand, as is the nature of Bohan. Light, sweet cherries with a hint of hard red candy, mild sweet strawberry, pomegranate. Rose petals and a hint of bay leaf. Some chalky grip on the finish. Definitely less extract and density than Falstaff or McDougall, a delicate styled pinot to serve with fish.
2019 Kutch Bohan Graveyard. As usual, this is a fully destemmed bottling, as Jamie said wines from this block are too stern when made in his usual whole cluster style. A big step up in the intensity of the fruit from the Bohan, cranberry and red cherry and cherry skin, red apple, followed by a pleasant brambly berry bush character. A great example of a wine without weight but with real intensity to the fruit.
2019 Kutch Mindego Ridge. This wine is immediately appealing, with a beautiful nose of intense cherry and citrus in perfect crisp ripeness. It has a lovely finish of ripe orange and orange peel and juicy acids. 75% whole cluster, from a vineyard right next to Alpine Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This should and the Graveyard should be the 2019s that drink really well in the earlier years. This is a very good wine, but Jamie says this vineyard has a lot of upside as he dials in how to make the best wines he can from there.
2019 Kutch Sonoma Coast Pinot. You really have to give Jamie credit for making this very good wine year after year and holding to a $39 price point that is below most appellation pinots even from merely-okay type producers. The fruit here is from Bohan, McDougall and Mindego Ridge, in that order (less than 10% from Mindego, and thus still the Sonoma Coast labeling). Where the other pinots focus more on fruit on the nose at this early stage, this wine has a rich nose of pine forest, sweet dark soil and cocoa shells. The fruit is rounder, with blueberry and some strawberry cream. Definitely rounder and without the sharp edges of the others as they appear at such a young age.
2019 Kutch McDougall. Pine needles, purple and blue fruit, a light layer of vanilla. Some chalky mineral. The mid palate isn’t full in the way that this bottling normally is, which might reflect the youth and recently bottled nature, but on this night, McDougall did not show as well as most of the other bottles or as well as it normally shows in other vintages.
2019 Kutch Falstaff. This was really impressive. Great intensity and purity of fruit, red berry fruit with real freshness and crunch to it. Good tannic structure to the wine, with nice pine forest, oranges, juicy citrus acids. While I think Mindego and Graveyard might be the bottles I would open in the next year or two, I think Falstaff looks like the one which will become the best wine of this Kutch vintage with time.
2019 Kutch Sonoma Coast Chardonnay. This was a little richer and rounder than past vintages of this wine, to me, though that’s a relative thing, as Jamie makes his chardonnays without little or (in this vintage) no new oak, with high acids and a Chablis styling. Pineapple fruit, a hint of mint, sweet lemon. A very nice wine at a great price (I think $39?) which will drink well in the next several years.
2019 Kutch Trout Gulch Chardonnay. No new oak this vintage (it can have up to 20% in some other vintages). This has sterner and more serious styling to it than the Sonoma Coast. Intense lemon and lemon zest, white pepper, white flowers, river rock minerality. Very Chablis-like. A great wine which will be approachable early but should reward mid-term aging.
Among other things to admire here is that, with Jamie’s approach to pick dates, oak treatment and overall non-intervention, we really taste each of these sites. While they all tasted like Kutch wines, no two of them were highly similar to each other. Very honest and transparent winemaking, here.
Were these 4 oz bottles or another size? And were these wines already bottled or were some barrel samples? And these were filled and then delivered same day or?
