Thank you Michael for including us on your birthday and honoring our 2012 Pinot Noir!!!
California Pinot Noir & Thanksgiving
Last week we featured Oregon Pinots with the thought of Thanksgiving and appropriate American wine. I confess that Cabernet Sauvignon takes first place in our home, but many would argue that, as the crown jewel of Burgundy, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, averages $15,000.00 a bottle on release, so Pinot Noir must be the top drop. Please do not think that I do not highly enjoy Pinot Noir though, and today we feature a few fine examples from the “Golden State”, the official nickname bestowed on California in 1968.
We are advised not to have large family gatherings, so what better opportunity to share fine wine from folks that love our Island, and who many of us know, as they lived here for twenty-five+ years. I refer to Huw and Dale Morris and their 2012 Wild Hogge Paso Robles Pinot Noir.
This is not just about thinking of good friends in wine, as their Pinot Noir, with the lovely Winslow Homer water colour label of wild hogs on our South Shore, rated a fine 93/100 from the Wine Enthusiast magazine. It is a blend of the French 115 clone, and one of my favorite, the University of California at Davis, clone 777. If you are unfamiliar with Davis, it is one of our world’s top seats of learning for enology and viticulture. Potential wine makers worldwide travel there to study.
So many of us drink Pinot Noir in its youth as the velvety tannins and softness allow for this. I have Californian Pinot Noir from the early 1990’s in our cellar and am a firm believer that a vast majority of red wine improves with age. As I am officially a year older today, I look forward to immediate and further vinous improvements. (I am allowed to tell that overused joke on my birthday!) Enjoy this nine-year-old Pinot from Wild Hogge.