Siduri Willamette Valley Pinot Noir
| Description: | Thank Goodness that the 2011 vintage came along after we'd been making wine for 18 years! In many ways, 2011 was the most challenging vintage we have ever dealt with, particularly when it came to getting fruit ripe. We knew all along the vintage was going to be late. Bud break and flowering were both behind the normal schedule and veraison (the coloring up of the grapes) didn't even begin until September 10, 2011. To help accelerate maturity we thinned to crop, down to 1 cluster per shoot, in all of our vineyards. We also ended up being a bit more active in pulling leaves in the fruit zone, to open up the canopy and prevent the growth of botrytis in the fruit. And then we waited, and waited, and waited….ultimately waiting into November to pick some of the Pinot Noir (the first time we have ever picked Pinot Noir in November). Fortunately, the late season weather largely cooperated, with heavy rains holding off until the last grapes made it into the winery. This allowed us to pick clean fruit, albeit at lower-than-normal sugar levels (brix ranged from 21.2 to 17.5). Acids were good, though not as high as these low brix might indicate, and most importantly, the flavors of the juice tasted fairly ripe. We carefully sorted the fruit, made any adjustments that we felt necessary (including doing a \"saignee\" or bleed off of the juice to concentrate the flavors), extracted what we could during the cold soak thru fairly frequent punchdowns, and the inoculated the must. We actually backed down a good bit on punchdowns during fermentation as we didn't want to make the wine into something it wasn't (ie. try to make it bigger than it really was). Upon the conclusion of fermentation we pressed the wine directly to barrel, all French oak, but only about 30% new. We then blended the wine and bottled it, without fining or filtration, in July. Most importantly, we were very selective when it came to blending. There are no single-vineyard Siduri Oregon Pinot Noirs in 2011 and only 17% of the fruit made the cut for the Chehalem Mountains Pinot Noir, with the rest of the fruit going into this Willamette Valley blend. This strict selection played a critical role in creating this wine. The 2011 Siduri Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a lovely wine, managing to be both light in texture and rich in flavor. Raspberry and mint-scented cherry flavors along with hints of vanilla combine to make a beautiful wine that lingers on the fine-grained finish. 3394 cases produced Region Description. Stretches from Portland in the north to Eugene in the south. A majority of the Willamette Valley vineyards lie on the foothills of the Coast Range that forms the western edge of the valley. |
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| Price: | $ 31.49 |
| Price in original currency: | None |
Available from Haskell's
| Address: |
81 South 9th Street Minneapolis, MN 55402 United States |
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| Telephone (toll-free): | 800-486-2434 |
| Telephone (regular): | 612-342-2437 |
| Fax: | 612-342-2440 |
First added to 1000 Corks on April 15, 2022.
