“The stock market had just crashed leaving everybody in a tizzy; the vintage had already been declared dead on arrival,” relates Somers so as to set the scene for his 2007 Pinot Noir Dundee Hills, “so I elected to put the fruit from Abbey Ridge, Charlie’s, and Le Pavillon into a single less expensive wine.” Fresh purple plum is shadowed by plum distillate, along with autumn foliage and smoky black tea. The texture here is polished yet there is an incisive sense of juicy brightness and tart fruit skin. An underlying sense of marrow-infused beef stock serves for a sense of richness, while a saline streak lends saliva-inducement in a long finish. “Sometimes rain can actually fix a vintage,” notes Somers – while leaving open just how much that really applies to 2007 – and for everyone to be afraid of rain is ridiculous. In this area, it rains every vintage. I can show you wines in my cellar where there was a vintage before the rain and a vintage (the same year) picked after the rain that everybody insists they picked before; and the wines that were picked after are better.” (I haven’t checked back with him yet about the 2013 harvest.) Incidentally, a Charlie’s Vineyard from the second vintage of J. Christopher, 1997, was decadent but fascinating and still possessed of some primary juiciness of fresh fruit when tasted alongside this 2007. Somers, however, opined that the bottle was not showing as it should; and there was no replacement at hand; so I have refrained from publishing a note.
Jay Somers – for much more about whom, and about his J. Christopher project with the Mosel’s Ernie Loosen, consult my Issue 202 account – picked from October 21 through November 2, 2011. He chaptalized certain lots – though not those from the estate’s immediate Calkins Lane neighborhood – and finished alcohols vary between 12.8% and 13.2%. As usual here, an extremely restrained regimen of punch-downs or pump-overs prevails. All of the Pinots received – and typically will receive in future – one-quarter each of new, once, twice, and thrice previously used barrels, so as to put the emphasis on terroir character, while keeping other things close to equal. A full tier of A.V.A.-designates was bottled, which – as with the vineyard-designates – did not occur until April and May of this year. “I’ve been making wine here (in the Willamette) for a long time,” says Somers, “and something I’ve learned is that we have cool vintages from time to time” – prior to 2010 he adduces 1997, his second commercial vintage – “and my feeling is that you have to go with the vintage, and not try to screw with it too much trying to make the wine what you want to make, but something it’s not.” As Somers remarked to me apropos his A.V.A. series – though this could be applied to all his work – “We’re not constructing wine, but representing something with it.” Incidentally, the first two barrels of Pinot came off of the two-year-old estate vineyard in 2012, likely destined for that vintage’s Chehalem A.V.A. blend, with the return of Appassionata (the name formerly used for a late-bottled, late released cuvee, henceforth for the estate vineyard) likely to come with 2013.
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