From the estate’s oldest, high elevation, “Pommard clone” vines, the WillaKenzie’s 2010 Pinot Noir Aliette delivers and umami-rich amalgam of roasted red meats and shitake mushrooms allied to fresh, tart-edged cherry and plum. Here the spice from barrel is well-integrated into a fine-grained and dense yet far from heavy palate. Black tea, moss, and forest floor notes emerge with a bit of airing, lending a sense of surprising but positive evolution, while salinity serves for welcome saliva-inducement in a downright gripping finish. This impressive bottling should develop even more depth with a few years in bottle and reward return visit through at least 2020, and hopefully (as well as quite possibly) beyond.
“We really pushed the envelope in 2011 to achieve full ripeness,” explains Thibaud Mandet, “so we picked a lot in the first week of November, and continued until the last week of November.” This suggests that he and his partner, WillaKenzie founder Bernard Lacroute, may have set the record in this extreme harvest. “It was a little bit stressful,” adds Mandet with evident understatement, “because as you know the days are getting shorter and cooler, and the weather can change suddenly. But luckily it stayed dry and breezy compared with many vintages. In the end we did only a little bit of chaptalization.” “Of course,” adds Lacroute, “this all depends on maintaining the health of your vines and fruit, because if you get a little bit of rot inside the clusters, it’s ‘game over,’ and you’ve got to pick.” Amazingly, considering the lateness of harvest and the fact that the 2011s here also went into barrel late and were slow to undergo malo-lactic transformation, Mandet and Lacroute elected to bottle their top tier of Pinots a couple of weeks earlier than usual, already in February and March of this year. The 2010 vintage was late here too by long-term standards, but nonetheless finished on November 1, at which point in 2011 most of the harvest action still lay ahead. What’s more, alcohol levels – naturally in the mid to upper 13% – were nearer normal. But then, 2010 yields were very low. Whether the phenolic evolution in 2011 was superior, I won’t be able to judge until next year, because most of the WillaKenzie Pinots are only released and shown to me in their third year. In lieu of acidulation, incidentally, Mandet says he will often harvest a small portion of a given vineyard early to generate a higher-acid lot that can then be used for blending. Additional experience this July with WillaKenzie’s very limited reserve bottlings certainly showed me the potential here for positive bottle maturation as well as for moderation – given time – of both vintage extremities and new oak influence. (Mandet and Lacroute were not, however, ready to show me their 2009 Reserve; and indeed, the 2008 is only just being released. For more about this estate and the personalities and vineyards behind it, consult my introduction in Issue 202.)
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