Opened a 2015 on Saturday night…and the exact opposite of the 2014 I opened the week before. Fruit is still primary and drinking beautifully. Immediate zip with the first taste. Last of my 1023 bottles.
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Boom! Will be drinking my 15s very soon. Have one 14 left so ill pour a glass side/side just for fun. Thanks for the update - very happy to hear this!
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As someone keenly interested in aging ability of wines, I’m curious about this concept of a very fruity wine suddenly losing fruit. If a wine is bottled fairly young (within 12 months of vintage) it will have a lot of esters lifting the fruity presentation to the nose. However with a couple years the esters hydrolyze and one is left with whatever fruit the grape material has. Does anyone know when these things get bottled?
I also think that some fairly tannic reds need a lot of time in barrel to develop and relax which also allows the long-term fruit elements to come forward. If you taste the wine a bit undeveloped, the true core fruit is not apparent. So, if a wine is bottled early, the esters will eventually leave but the core fruit elements may be unable to come forward because of the early bottling. Aging in bottle is very different than in barrel and they have specific purposes in developing the wine.
Also ripeness level of the red grape material will affect aging ability.
Being unfamiliar with these LL wines, I’d be up for a trade with someone local to change that.
F
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Fwiw, in the fall of 2018 we did a vertical of Limerick Lane “1023”: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016
The group consensus was:
2012: Mature, more oak than the others.
2013: Mature, well-balanced.
2014: Awkward
2015: Young, full fruit
2016: Needs time.
The 15 and the 13 were considered the best, but were pretty different. There was definitely something up with the 2014 3 years ago.
I opened my bottle of 2016 about a month ago and it was ready to go and quite good.
Btw, in spite of the price, I bought a bottle of the 2018 (now renamed “Estate cuvee”) at the tasting room a week ago. It was tasting phenomenally well. I believe 2018 is the first vintage with Chris Pittenger as the winemaker. They changed the blend slightly in 2017 and started using a small amount of PS instead of Grenache.
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Super interesting, thanks Fred! I’d be happy to trade with you if I was in CA. If you ever make it out to AZ…
Cool tasting and really helpful feedback Clyde! I’m definitley going to open a 15 soon as it sounds like its still drinking really well.
Id love to try an 18, but as you mentioned, the price increases have me watching from the sidelines. If I see one at auction for a decent deal I may pull the trigger as I’d be very curious to try a recent release with the new winemaker
Thanks again for posting ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Opened a 2013 LL Hail Mary last night, slow ox’d for maybe two hours; fruit was gone on this one like the 1023. Left this in the glass for a couple hours to see if it would pick up some complexity and it was just basically flat. Had a 12’ Hail Mary last year that was amazing, so surprised to get this out of 13’, which was a bigger vintage. Have 14’-16’ left, will make a note to pull these sooner than later to drink.
Ughh, bummer buddy - sorry to hear that!
…And after looking in Cellar Tracker, I’m even more sad because it looks like I still have one of these as well, ha!
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Wanted to post here as this entry level 2015 Russian River zin was a MILLION times better than the 2014/1023. I’m going to get after my 2015’s in the very short term, because this bottle was great and I don’t want to miss the window.
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