a fine wine tasting archive
4 notes
Tom Dehlinger planted an apple orchard to vines in 1975, eight years before the Russian River Valley had a name. His Pinot Noirs are labelled by soil type rather than by block, and the 2007 Goldridge was opened at fourteen years.
Six barrels from the coldest, wettest California vintage in memory. Four clones, eleven months on the lees, and a child's wagon on the label with wings on it.
Belle Côte usually hangs two or three weeks longer than any other Chardonnay in Napa or Sonoma. In 2017 the picking finished on 28 September — ten days before the fires.
An English engineer's Cabernet estate on a mountain slope in Knights Valley, from a vintage that punished impatience. At seventeen years, the 2003 had grown into itself — and it was drunk with takeaway Sichuan on a Friday night.