2006 Pinot Noir, Wildcat Mountain Vineyard

Price: $40.00
Qty.  

Awarded 93 Points by the Wine Enthusiast!

ORIGIN:  The grapes for this Pinot Noir came exclusively from our Wildcat Mountain Vineyard, owned by Steve MacRostie and his partners Nancy and Tony Lilly. Here the vines dig into the sparse volcanic soil and stand firm against the strong winds that race in off of the Pacific Ocean most afternoons. This fog-shrouded mountaintop vineyard is a classic Sonoma Coast site, cool and challenging, and produces wines of great distinction.

VINEYARD NOTES:  The 2006 growing season was long, cool and quite protracted, which is exactly the way we like it.  Longer hang time leads to richer, more fully developed flavors in both the grapes and the resulting wines. Yields were customarily low at Wildcat, just over 2 tons per acre, delivering fruit with intense flavor.  Slightly larger-than-normal berries resulted in wines that are just a touch softer than usual—no bad thing, given this vineyard’s innate tendency toward massive structure.  The grapes that eventually went into this blend were harvested by hand on September 21 and 24.

WINEMAKING NOTES:  The fruit was gently destemmed into open-top fermenters.  Following a three-day cold soak to boost color without increasing tannins, the tanks were inoculated with yeast.  The caps were managed with a combination of punchdowns and pumpovers to maximize positive extraction.  Only the finest barrels from the 115 and 667 clonal blocks of the vineyard were selected for our Wildcat Mountain Pinot, with the rest of Wildcat’s high-quality Pinot Noir being reserved for our Carneros Pinot Noir blend. After ten months of ageing exclusively in French oak barrels, 30 percent of which were new, the wine was bottled on August 7, 2007.

TASTING NOTES:  A customarily dark, dense ruby color, with aromatics of ripe cherry preserves and cinnamon toast.  In the mouth, this wine is dry, velvety smooth, full and rich, offering layers of black cherry and mocha, and a deft touch of oak.  The complete Pinot Noir experience, from start to finish.

This vintage produced 2,006 (750 ml) 6-bottle cases.

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