Beauty and the Beast

It was the end of a working day last week, and I wandered into my wine cellar in the garage looking for a bottle of Pinot.

From the 2005 vintage, we had produced a number of very small (some only a single barrel) offerings and will have 11 separate single-barrel releases in 2009. Anyway, I found a bottle of one of the 2005 wines wedged behind some Cabernet.

The 2005 Pinot Noir - Mission Ranch, Pommard clone is both beautiful and ugly simultaneously.

Shortly after I acquired the La Rochelle brand from my cousins, we decided to change the packaging to more clearly delineate what we wanted La Rochelle to be. Before our current label design (created by Nick McNeill), we developed a new look that was just horrendous. The picture to the right shows the abomination (kids, this is why you leave the label design to the pros!).

The wine inside the bottle was wonderful. Explosive aromatically (fresh raspberry and cranberry fruit, spice from barrel), the wine had a beautiful, silky mid-palate, open fruit flavors, and great acidity. I had it with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. Yum score = 100.

Beautiful labels, do not guarantee delicious wine, and - thankfully enough, in this case - the ugly ones don't also describe the wine inside.

2006 Pinot Noir, Santa Cruz Mountains Released

While single-vineyard wines make up the backbone of our Pinot Noir Program (in fact, we will release a wine from the Deer Park Vineyard from Santa Cruz Mountains for the wine club later in the year), our appellation wines boast a complexity and deliciousness that typify our best offerings.

Grapes have been grown in the Santa Cruz Mountains since the 1850s with Pinot Noir a growing contributor to the overall acreage planted in the appellation, especially recently. Unlike other more hill-challenged appellation, many of the vineyards in this appellation are small, the average size (according to John Haeger in his seminal book North American Pinot Noir) being just 11 acres.

The Deer Park Vineyard provides the vast majority of fruit for this offering with the San Vicente Vineyard adding the last few percent. This wine is dramatic, imbued with wonderfully intense dark-berried fruit, great mid-palate acidity and a fair amount of tannin. This is one of those wines that needs some time before it shows its best.

When it does, though, the results will be stunning. Only 80 cases of this wine were produced and can be ordered in our on-line store.