Solena Grande Cuvee Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, USA

點擊次數(shù)：3595

Pale to medium ruby-purple colored, the 2015 Pinot Noir Grande Cuvee has a dark fruited, broody nose with notes of black earth and tar intermingled with notions of mulberries and black raspberries. Medium-bodied, firm and chewy in the mouth, it gives pleasant baked berry generosity and some spiciness on the finish.

The 2014 Pinot Noir Grande Cuvee comes from the Willamette and McMinnville AVAs and was picked between 13 September and 23 October. Matured for eight months in barrel, it has a blackberry and bilberry scented bouquet, juicy and almost pastille-like, though nicely defined and I could see this having commercial appeal. The palate is medium-bodied with a little coarseness on the entry. Moderate weight in the mouth with firm tannin, I appreciate the underbrush element towards the finish that lends it some tension. Not the best Pinot Noir...but this is well priced.

The 2012 Pinot Noir Grande Cuvée, a blend of different vineyard sites and a reflection of the vintage, offers smudged raspberry coulis and strawberry scents on the nose. The palate is chewy on the entry with black grippy fruit, with an easy-drinking, quite bold finish that delivers flavor in rudimentary fashion at a keen price.

As with the Montalieu’s “basic” bottling under the Hyland Estate label, I found a slightly awkward bifurcation in the Solena 2011 Pinot Noir Grande Cuvee between tart-edged cherry and red currant on the one hand and an alliance of toasted wood, leather, and sweat aromas and flavors on the other, with the corollary that there is a dearth of finishing juiciness. The feel here is firm and almost glassy. Pit piquancy and salinity happily help serve for invigoration and salivation in a sustained finish, but smoky, toasty notes as well as a faintly drying hint of tannin persist to the (granted, just slightly slightly) bitter end. I would tentatively plan to enjoy this by 2015. Laurent Montalieu expressed more sanguinity and less surprise than most of his colleagues at both the prospects he thought 2011 harbored as it was being harvested, and the success of his resultant wines – which include not only his and spouse Danielle Andrus Montalieu’s Solena bottlings and those of the affiliated Domaine Danielle Laurent Vineyard just east of Yamhill, but also those of historic Hyland Estate south of McMinnville (which they co-own), and Four Graces which he vinifies for the Black family. “I think we have all the tools that we’ve been investing in forever,” says Montalieu – an early Willamette proponent of biodynamic farming – in his idiomatic, French-accented way “and we’ve had to use them very little. But here came a vintage in which you had to use all of those tools, in terms of sorting and how to get out (of the grape) what you needed, but also the viticultural tools: how to prune and manage and pick-out what we needed to at the proper time. And I think we are all quite well prepared by 2010 because of it being (so) late. And after we got those 2010s into bottle just happy that harvest was over, six months later the wines were magnificent. They’d made a change that I’ve never seen in a wine. So we went into 2011, like, ‘don’t worry about anything!’.” Picking for these 2011 Pinots took place primarily already in the third week of October. Montalieu said he added some enzymes to a few early lots as a precaution, “but then we saw that we were going to get good extraction and didn’t need them.” Tartaric acid was added to some musts from young vines. As usual at this address, multiple vinificatory regimens were employed lot-by-lot, with bottling at 11 months for the Grand Cuvee, and 13 for the single-vineyard Pinots. (More on Montalieu’s methods and vineyard sources can be found in my issue 202 coverage of both Solena and Hyland Estate’s estate-bottlings.) Tel. (503) 662-3700

Representing nearly 5,000 cases and sourced from a wide range of sites, some prestigious, as well as incorporating a bit of Domaine Danielle Laurent estate fruit, the Solena 2010 Pinot Noir Grande Cuvee is intended, as both of its namesakes explained, to be “a value wine that our friends can purchase for any day, and whose price,” they hasten to add, “has been at $25 since (they started it) in 2003.” Juicy fresh cherry with a faint overlay of toast and vanilla inhabit a satin-textured and (at barely over 13% alcohol) buoyant palate, finishing with simple but soothing and refreshing persistence. Enjoy this over the next 18-24 months. Laurent Montalieu and Danielle Andrus Montalieu – both by then veterans of the Oregon wine scene (he long-time winemaker for WillaKenzie; she the daughter of Archery Summit founder Gary Andrus) – planted their Domaine Danielle Laurent vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton A.V.A. in 2002, and there the impressive Solena winery facility was inaugurated in 2009. (Wines from another of their properties are reviewed under Hyland Estates in this report). Montalieu – whose family roots are in Bordeaux – has gone in recent years from being a self-styled “vineyard neatness freak” to a passionate practitioner of biodynamics. After a long cold soak, Pinot here ferments partly spontaneously and partly via yeast cultures; reaches relatively high temperatures; is normally pressed at dryness (though occasionally just before); and is settled for three days before going to barrels, one-third to half of which are new. Readers can readily see that the style of the resultant Pinots isn’t one that exactly excites me, but I hope to have described them fairly enough that those who especially value torrefactive, confitured or confectionary notes as well as plushness in their Pinot will recognize that, given their proclivities, they should interpret my scores as overly-critical. In addition to some Oregon wines sourced from outside the Willamette, the Montalieus also render a few wines from eastern Washington fruit which I did not have a chance to taste. Tel. (503) 662-3700