Agreed. The 2007 ain’t too shabby either.
A real shame this vineyard had to be completely replanted.
Wonder when new vintages will be coming to market…
BTW, there’s NOBODY who has clearly produced a pinot that can consistently age and improve more the Joe Davis!
TTT
Agreed.
Agree completely on Kutch. Also, Ceritas, Rhys and Littorai…
This (Arcadian)
As I see things, the chickens have come back to roost.
I have been around on the wine boards since the Usenet days.
Usenet>West Coast Wine Network>ERobertParker>WB.
As I remember things, at some point in the early 90’s things went from occasional posts about WS and Rochioli to a minor groundswell about Flowers.
Then came Siduri in '94 (though the talk started a few years later than that) and Merry Edwards ('97 but the talk started a few years later) and then all hell broke loose.
25 years on, a lot of regulars on EBob and this Board were mainly buying California pinot. I have no way to prove this; it is my perception based on posts.
So here we are in 2020. A lot of KB and similarly styled pinot is sitting around in cellars waiting to be declared DOA and sent on their trip to the local waste treatment plant.
I think of Mark B’s thunder-toilet.
David,
I think the first thing that has to be discussed is the term ‘bad’ here. What do you mean by this term? The wines were faulty? They were impossible to drink because they were offensive? They did not meet your expectations? They did not match tasting notes from these very same wines that you’ve seen recently here on this board or CT? Or they simply were not enjoyable based on your current palate?
For every ‘bad’ wine out there, there are tons who will find that same wine quite enjoyable. Therefore, I think in this case it’s necessary to look at the language used to try to understand this concept better.
This has, as usual, become somewhat of a ‘favorites’ theme where those that have favorite producers who they believe make wines that are ageable versus others that are not. But I think the point here is that some wines will ‘evolve’ into something ‘better’, some will not change much and will therefore be a picture into how wines were made by that producer at that time, and some will falter and age quickly. Can we clearly categorize which producers fall into each category? No - but folks will try.
Perhaps you can come back and explain why these wines were ‘bad’ to you please . . .
Cheers.
Greg dal Piaz opened a Special Burgundy at a dinner 20 years ago which was very good. It was 50% petite sirah, 40% charbono, 5% early burgundy, 5% napa gamay.
I still wonder about the “early burgundy” grape.
1999 Dehlinger was absolutely stunning last year. I had bottles that were dead previously, but boy did the one last year knock me for a loop. Delicious. I sourced all of my bottles from winebid 10+ years ago, so variance was expected. I just wasn’t expecting any life left at this stage.
Pop and Pour. I thought the older wines become worse if decanted.
Hi Larry. The wines tasted either like a sweet syrup or just very sour. Very different when compared the the same vintage when opened when they were younger.
It’s always funny watching all the board favorites-of-the-moment in contrast to what’s out there. Lots of hype and mediocrity, along with some gems. Meanwhile, some of the people who taste most broadly get ignored.
Anyway, I do remember the Siduri hype and have friends who’ve bought since the start. I saw the label fall out of favor and get this reputation for being over-ripe. But, that’s a load of crap. Ripeness depends on the vineyard and vintage and varies quite a bit. These make our extensive retrospective blind tasting series (10, 15 or 20 years after vintage). When there’s a pair in the line-up, they tend to finish 1-2 or 1-3 out of 8 to 10 wines, but there is an occasional dud. To spitball, I’d say about a 93% batting average of being impressive, which is about as good as it gets for any.
David,
An honest question here - do you normally enjoy the same wines now that you did 10 years ago? Something that may seem 'ripe’or ‘sweet’ now may have been I your wheelhouse 10 years ago . . .
Cheers.
It’s always funny watching all the board favorites-of-the-moment in contrast to what’s out there. Lots of hype and mediocrity, along with some gems. Meanwhile, some of the people who taste most broadly get ignored.
Anyway, I do remember the Siduri hype and have friends who’ve bought since the start. I saw the label fall out of favor and get this reputation for being over-ripe. But, that’s a load of crap. Ripeness depends on the vineyard and vintage and varies quite a bit. These make our extensive retrospective blind tasting series (10, 15 or 20 years after vintage). When there’s a pair in the line-up, they tend to finish 1-2 or 1-3 out of 8 to 10 wines, but there is an occasional dud. To spitball, I’d say about a 93% batting average of being impressive, which is about as good as it gets for any.
Wes-thank you. Not to be overly sensitive, but I was beginning to fear that I sounded like a decrepit crackpot. And maybe I am. To hear a measure of agreement from someone of your stature means a lot to me.
Speaking of being decrepit, I once received a PM from someone that is active on this Board asking that I write an “op-ed” type piece of my choice for his publication. Evidently he thought I had decent writing chops at the time. I can no longer recall who it was that asked and for which publication. It had to be in 2007 or so. My stored PM’s stop at 2009.
So to the point, that piece I wrote was generally predicting the situation that we could debate does or does not exist at the present time-a situation in which a lot of dead soldiers are laying in their sarcophagi.
Btw, I in no manner meant to imply that Siduri has anything to do with pinots that don’t age well-only that Siduri helped start the kick-off point to what became we Americans’ fascination with domestic pinot.
I must also admit to being a bit wary of our OP with only 11 posts. Is he legitimately unaware or is doing the wineboard equivalent of catfishing? If the former, than his inquiry all the more interesting: he has purchased winery-direct all these years and has not noticed that KB’s don’t age well until now?
Oh well. I said my piece. Without a doubt there are some California pinots that evolve positively in bottle. I have my beliefs as to which ones qualify. I seem to recall that our luminary Dan Kravitz posted on this subject within the last few weeks.
A little trick I have employed for year to see if my wines and other wines can and will age…
(With respect to Chet Kern whom I learned this from years ago)
I can’t speak to other CA Pinot wines but I will add this about my own wines.
I have personally found that my wines begin to shine best on day 4, 5, 6. On day 7, they can begin to oxidize, increase in VA, ethyl-acetate etc.
My opinion is that when a wine goes 4, 5, 6 days without oxing, they will see 10, 20, 30 years of age without any troubles at all…
Jamie
Jamie,
Intersting observation indeed - and one that I’m assuming tons of folks will now attempt to replicate ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
d
I’m assuming that you’re assuming a relative moderate kitchen temperature - 60-65 degrees, for instance. Anything warmer than that and my guess is that you will see the wine go downhill quicker. This also assumes that you have a sound cork ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I guess time will tell if you are correct - our kids will be able to tell us how accurate this is.
Cheers, my friend.
Yes you are correct Larry. Living in SF, temps are always 60-70 all year round. I wouldn’t try this in the summer time in Texas or FL. It could though be easily enough replicated with cellar temp. The refrigerator is too cold…
I remember when I read Chet doing this with 2005 Burgundy Grad Cru’s, he put them in the bottom of his refrigerator and left them for a month and they were still fresh. Likely 05 Grand Cru Burgs will be around many full moons from now.
I don’t have a mountain of evidence, but I think folks discussing changes in winemaking that have occurred since the 90s is a good place to start. I should preface this by saying that I’m pretty sensitive to a wine having aged “too long” in ways that many people I’ve tasted with are not, so keep that in mind when reading the following. Lauren and I have had more than a couple early to mid 80s Mondavi Reserve Pinots in the last couple years and they’ve been largely fantastic and absolutely not over the hill, one or two were in my top 5 or 10 wines in 2018. A few months back, Lauren and I drank a 2012 W-S Bucher and it was really really good, but after a couple hours started to flag a little, so I’d say it was probably as far as I’d want it to go. A few weeks back we had a 2013 W-S Westside Road Neighbors and it was still super young and fresh, so I think vintage and site have a lot to do with it as well. KB is farther down the extraction and oak road from even modern W-S so I’d imagine their curve is shorter as well.
Any wine can be aged. Does the wine evolve into something better? The answer depends on your taste and your taste alone. Historically (100+ years ago), wasn’t a certain amount of aging almost necessary to produce something that was even close to enjoyable? Perhaps climate change and wine making improvements have resulted in a much shorter aging curve, so Cali Pinot (a relatively “modern” wine, comparatively) can display some of these secondary characteristics in less time? It is still ageable, but not in the same context as an older Bdx? I admit to liking bolder, deeper Cali Pinot (some of the ageable wines noted above I consider to be too acidic for my taste). This last weekend we opened a 2013 Foxen Bien Nacido Block 8 that had evolved some - instead of primarily fruit forward, it was now a 50-50 blend of less boisterous fruit and savory components nicely layered and displaying a lot of depth - the finish took on a slightly sappy tartness which was also interesting. I am almost always pleasantly surprised at the evolution in 6-7 year old Kosta Browne Pinot too. I don’t normally age my Cali Pinot more than that, but that’s because that is the way I like it. For comparative purposes, I also regularly buy Benovia, Sojourn and Williams-Selyem. Cheers!
That’s similar to the old school stability test we learned in a class at Davis and had an assignment in. It’s just one glass of a/each wine, covered and kept at a moderate temperature. You then observe each day by smell and visual. (We took it further, so not just how long they remained stable, but what flaws did appear and observations of what grew on the surface.)