Sourced largely from Lone Start Vineyard but with contributions from Knudsen and Spirit Hill, the Argyle 2011 Pinot Noir Reserve displays sweetly ripe cherry and red raspberry with a confitured aspect rare in this vintage. Smoky black tea adds some interest. For all of its up-front sweetness, this texturally spare Pinot then finishes with brash juiciness accompanied by slightly detached tartness and lemon rind piquancy such as characterize so many of its vintage companions. I imagine it will drink well through 2015, and perhaps it will some gain polish and further complexity.
Co-founder and long-time director of Argyle Rollin Soles – for extensive information on whose background and methodology consult my issue 202 report – officially stepped-down from his post in March, though he will continue to advise the new director of winemaking, Wisconsin-born Nate Klostermann, who has been Soles’ assistant for almost 8 years, having arrived in Oregon via Petaluma, Argyle’s co-founding and long-time parent company. (Soles will now focus on his own Roco winery, on whose recent releases I again report in this issue.) No stock of Argyle Brut from either 2004 or torrid, early-harvested 2003 was set-aside for late-release as “Extended Tirage,” so the next installment of that consistently revelatory and profound wine will be a 2005 in a couple of years. “I was thinking about what a drag that fact is when I was putting together our tasting,” remarked Soles, channeling my thoughts. As in awe of and delighted with Argyle’s sparkling wines as I am – wines I dream might yet inspire consumers and vintners to conspire in the flowering of an Oregon sparkling wine culture – I continue to find their still wines far less successful, not to mention far less-attractively priced. In his 28 years at Argyle, 2011 is the only vintage in which Soles has elected to chaptalize even a single lot; but then, he offers climatological data to suggest that the last time things were as cool for the aggregate Willamette growing season was in 1954, when nobody was concerned yet about ripening wine grapes!
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