While the elderberry, blackberry and cassis evinced by Brittan’s 2011 Pinot Noir Gestalt Block preserve a vintage-typical tart edge, they’re possessed of a succulent sweetness and embedded in a more polished, downright satin-textured palate performance than was the case with the corresponding Basalt Block. Smaller clusters and berries here make for incredible density and phenolic concentration and I can feel and taste that on multiple levels, even though those facts seem to utterly belie this wine’s refined and alluring texture. (As intimated in my introduction, root penetration and soil structure – not just vine genetics or exposure – almost certainly, somehow, play a role in determining these characteristics.) As this opened to the air, a sense of high-toned distilled fruit essences became penetratingly and invigoratingly evident. The salt and stone borne along in the onrush of bright, juicy finishing fruit here is more severely – almost stunningly – gripping and salivary gland-milking than in its Basalt Block counterpart (which, incidentally, was the barely higher pH and alcohol – albeit at just under 13% – of the two). I’d plan on following this memorably refined, dense and energetic Pinot through at least 2025.
I received an extensive tour this year of the breezy, basaltic 180 degree hillside south of McMinnville that veteran California winemaker Robert Brittan – at 25 acres and counting – continues to plant, aided by his wife and industry veteran Ellen; and assistant winemaker Vince Vidrine. (Important details on this site and its various blocks as well as on Brittan’s approach and future plans can be found in my Issue 202 introduction to his estate.) I had the simultaneous opportunity to taste a near-complete set of Brittan Estate wines to date. (Their author felt that his inaugural 2006s were showing diffidently so they were omitted. In one instance where my note testified to significant changes since tasted for Issue 202, I published a re-review.) A personal encounter with these singular wines should be high on the to-do list of any wine lover – not just Pinotphile – who hasn’t yet had the experience. Over and beyond his Pinot Noirs (soon to be sourced in part from old California vine selections), Brittan’s estate essays in Chardonnay and Syrah have been nothing less than revelatory. And there will in future be Pinot Meunier, as well as a field blend featuring a diverse range of head-pruned Mediterranean varieties. That said, Chardonnay and Syrah may have met more than their match in 2011 and Brittan had already determined at the time of my visit not to bottle the former. Brittan’s Gestalt Block features incredibly dense and heavy (possibly quite young) basalt rock that is structurally entirely distinct from the sort that’s found elsewhere on his property and underlies much of the Willamette Valley; and other things are equal enough that it’s hard to avoid crediting geology with a decisive role in accounting for the unique characteristics of Pinot Noir from this block. Speaking of geology’s potentially explanatory role, I know of very few wine growers who are as keenly interested or involved in studying the interfaces between rock and root; soil, microflora and plant metabolism than Brittan, who comes from a family full of scientists. And speaking of flora, Brittan’s projects for studying and encouraging diversity of flora and fauna across his property – but especially the microorganisms that populate his grapes’ skins – are far-reaching and quite possibly of profound importance for understanding and promoting wine quality. Most organic viticulture as practiced today, he opines, “dumps huge amounts of sulfur on the vines that almost completely obliterates anything that grows on those clusters and brings a huge sulfur load into the winery. This is one reason we see so much reduction, especially in Willamette Pinot Noir.” Since there’s no aquifer on Brittan’s huge hillside, he is also keenly interested in dry-farm
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