Tasting Report: 2010 Kutch Pinot Noir

With wine, the path of discovery can be as enjoyable as tasting the beverage itself. As enthusiasts we oscillate between depth and breadth: We temporarily stop and dive deep into a category until another region catches our attention.

For me, I've been stuck on California Pinot Noir for a couple years. And it's unclear how long it will be before I come up for air.

Within California Pinot, there seems to be a battle between lean and ripe. Between producing nuanced wines that let the vineyards speak for themselves vs. aiming to produce blockbuster wines. Within this dichotomy, even after reading several articles, it was unclear to me where Kutch Wines fits in.

38 year old Jamie Kutch worked on Wall Street before cashing in and pursuing his dream of producing wine. After being impressed with wines from producers like Kosta Browne and A.P. Vin he reached out to them for guidance - and was welcomed with open arms. A far cry from the competitive financial world he left behind.

He got his start producing wines at Kosta Browne so you'd think his style would run towards ripeness. But you'd be wrong. After producing the 2005 vintage at KB he set out on his own and developed a minimalist philosophy which favors earlier picking. But like Michael Browne he prefers to keep racking -- the transfer of wine from one container to another to remove sediment -- to a minimum. The result can be a tremendous creamy, velvety mouthfeel. But only if you can still produce a wine with good clarity and avoid rotten egg aromas from dead yeast along the way.

When I hear about California producers aiming for balance I sometimes fear they'll go too far. That the wines will be under-ripe and hard to enjoy. My favorite producers find that intersection between pure fruit flavors, the right amount of ripeness, and ultimately find a way to produce a delicious enjoyable glass of wine.

Kutch only produces Pinot Noir from Sonoma at this point. The appelation wines -- from the Sonoma Coast and Anderson Valley -- retail for $39. The single vineyard wines sell for $50. But good luck finding them at retail. Considering the modest production levels and the quality here I think these wines a good value.

The best way to buy them is by spending a couple years on their mailing list. I've on the list about a year so far. No dice. Thankfully a friend shared a couple bottles of his recent allocation. Here are my notes on one of their 2010s:

2010 Kutch Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast
13.9% Alcohol
240 Cases produced
$39

There's a purity of fruit and freshness here that's tremendously appealing. Light-medium bodied visually with perfectly ripe strawberries dominant and supporting tart cherry notes. It's subtle, but along with mild orange peel notes, supporting herabaceous aromatics and flavors add a perfect touch of earthy compleixty. Not an off note in the bottle. I like this. A lot. A tremendous introduction to the producer.

93/100 WWP: Outstanding

Further Reading:

Hop on the Kutch mailing list by visting http://kutchwines.com


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What 1% increase in spending will sell you more wine?

Ironically, the answer is probably not by increasing the quality of your wine. With the one exception, moving from a Parker (or other pointillistic) rating of 89 to 90, there is very little chance that you can find any benefit to a 1% increase in wine quality leading to a measured increase in wine sales. Yet [...]

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Ballentine Vineyards ? Nice Change of Pace in the Napa Valley

Would you like to try something a little different than the usual wine-tasting fare of the Napa Valley? Try Ballentine Vineyards! It?s a little more on the old-fashioned side, with down-to-earth folks running the winery and keeping a very low profile. Continue reading

Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/ballentine-vineyards-%e2%80%93-nice-change-of-pace-in-the-napa-valley/

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WBW 74 Wrap-up: 39 Sparkling Values

This is my fifth time hosting Wine Blogging Wednesday, our monthly virtual tasting event, but my enthusiasm has not diminished with the passage of time. In fact, since bringing back the event from hiatus it looks like the idea might be picking up some steam judging from the entires this month. While many of the [...]

WBW 74 Wrap-up: 39 Sparkling Values originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Ballentine Vineyards ? Nice Change of Pace in the Napa Valley

Would you like to try something a little different than the usual wine-tasting fare of the Napa Valley? Try Ballentine Vineyards! It?s a little more on the old-fashioned side, with down-to-earth folks running the winery and keeping a very low profile. Continue reading

Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/ballentine-vineyards-%e2%80%93-nice-change-of-pace-in-the-napa-valley/

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Passionate About Western Pinot Noir? This Might Be For You...

Here's another one of those things I come across and think "man, this is targeted right at me!" It's no secret I've gotten stuck (in a good way) on California Pinot Noir. Every time I stray into other categories and taste a wine I'm not thrilled with I scurry back to my comfort zone.

PinotReport focuses its coverage on Western Pinot Noir - which translates to mostly new world wines outside of Pinot Noir's traditional home of Burgundy. The publication is put out by former Wine Spectator Senior Editor and President Gregory Walter who lives in Sonoma. His coverage of nearby producers is extensive, but he also devotes time to Oregon, New Zealand, and other areas known for Pinot Noir production.

Seeing that there was a publication out there devoted exclusively to new world Pinot Noir was intriguing to me. Unlike other categories it's not exactly clear which professional critic's voice is most authoritative in new world Pinot Noir.

I follow James Laube from Wine Spectator closely, but he only covers California Pinot Noir and has a lot of other categories to cover as well. Harvey Steiman covers Oregon Pinot Noir for Spectator, and has turned me on to a lot of great values, but Oregon Pinot Noir has been disappointing to me. I always looked at Robert Parker's reviews of Pinot Noir as half-hearted. As in: If it's outside of Bordeaux, Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Napa, it's second tier. Antonio Galloni has picked up coverage of California Pinot Noir along with seemingly everything else for Wine Advocate so I doubt he'll have much time to focus on the category.

Burghound does cover California Pinot Noir but I'm predisposed to suspect it's through the lense of how well it exudes Burgundian character. The Prince of Pinot looks promising even though he doesn't score wines. I'll have to take a closer look at each of these.

But PinotReport is uniquely positioned in this space.

I reached out to Gregory last fall and asked for a trial subscription for the purposes of writing this review and I've been following along with new issues since.

Each issue starts with opening thoughts which usually focus on the current vintage or the state of the Western Pinot Noir market at large. The bulk of the content follows a format that should be familiar to Wine Advocate readers whereby the winery's story is told along with some editorial thoughts on the quality of the current releases. Tasting notes for each wine reviewed along with prices and numerical scores on a 100 point scale follow. A typical issue is around 10 pages long and features wines from a half dozen producers. New issues are published about once a month.

I'm a big believer in blind tasting so it's encouraging to read that "All wines were tasted blind and scored before knowing anything other than that the general region they were from." I think this is particularly important when assessing various bottlings from a given producer. If any reviewer is presented wines in ascending price order I can't help but think they're going to be predisposed to liking the more expensive wines more.

PinotReport seems to navigate the situation successfully. For example, here's his note on the entry level Sojourn appellation bottling. Assuming the first sentence is what was written during blind tasting and the second sentence is his thoughts after revealing the labels it makes me take special note of the favorable rating of this more affordable bottling:

Sojourn Cellars
Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2010

Medium-deep ruby color; deep, earthy cherry and spice aromas; deep, complex cherry flavors with many layers of spice, anise and earth notes; silky texture; great structure and balance; long finish. Complex and many-layered Pinot that is a testament to the fact that an appellation blend in the hands of the right winemaker can as good or better than a vineyard designate.

925 cases made $39 Score: 95

Print and online subscriptions are available. Each new issue is announced online with an email to subscribers which contains a link to download the content as a PDF. Back issues are also available for download. Search capabilities could be better, but full PinotReport tasting notes are available on CellarTracker under Professional Reviews for subscribers.

I'd love to see the content delivered as a gorgeous interactive eBook. I always enjoy reading the latest issue of Spectator with a glass of wine. I'd like to extend that experience to other publications but a PDF doesn't quite have the same feel as a glossy magazine. Maybe reading it on an iPad would help (I don't yet own one but I'm tempted).

Walter's enthusiasm for the subject is evident which in turn makes reading each newsletter enjoyable. He has a wealth of knowledge yet never talks down to the reader. My sample size is small but I think he tends to be more generous with the big scores than some other critics. Once you account for that his palate seems very well calibrated with mine. Your mileage may vary of course!

Overall I'd rate PinotReport 92 points. Content so laser focused it's hard not to like. Expertise and experience on the subject delivered in a warm likeable tone. I get the feeling it would be a ton of fun to go wine tasting through Sonoma with Greg, and I think PinotReport provides a window into what that would be like.

So check it out: PinotReport.com

You can also find PinotReport on Facebook: PinotReport
And follow him on Twitter: @PinotReport

Question of the Day: Who is your most trusted source of new world Pinot Noir reviews?


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Field Notes from a Wine Life ? Media Edition

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass…

Rex Pickett

If you’re not reading Rex Pickett’s (author of Sideways and Vertical) blog, you are officially remiss.

Pickett is a gifted writer who cranks out perfectly incubated long-form posts with turns of phrase that are both wry and rich, offering insight into the machinations of publishing, film and stage that few culture vultures grasp.

Pickett recently wrote an extensive (3900 word) post on the reasons why a film sequel to Sideways (directed by Alexander Payne) would not be made from Vertical, Pickett’s book sequel.  In doing so, Pickett offered a discursive meditation on Payne’s artistic pathos and the factors that may be playing into Vertical’s stall on the way to celluloid.

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Unfortunately, Pickett removed the post after re-publishing a second version that deleted much of the armchair psychologist rumination he originally channeled from Payne’s psyche.  An email inquiry to Pickett on why he removed the post (in either iteration) has gone unanswered.

If I were a muckraker, I would publish the post because Pickett’s deletion of the post from his site did not delete the post from RSS feed readers like Bloglines or Google Reader.  But, I’m not a muckraker…

Hopefully, Pickett will revisit the topic in a manner that is less confessional and more elucidation because it was worth the extended read time.  Until then you can read the other posts on his site and gain tremendous insight into the vicissitudes of the publishing process, what the afterglow is like after capturing the cultural zeitgeist and how he’s helping bring Sideways to the theatre with a stage version.

It’s definitely recommended reading.

A Discovery of Witches

While we’re on the topic of books and authors (and with Halloween around the corner), a reinforcing mention goes to Deb Harkness of Good Wine Under $20.  Earlier this year a little book she wrote called, “A Discovery of Witches” was published and immediately shot up the best sellers lists.  The movie rights were acquired this summer by Warner Bros, likely securing Harkness’ financial future in the process.

While I read fiction infrequently (the last fiction book being Vertical by Rex Pickett), those that I know who can tell the difference between kindling and a classic call A Discovery of Witches “mad genius.”
Any conversation about a wine blogger doing good should begin with Deb Harkness who is now dabbling in rarified air.  Pick up her book if you haven’t yet.

Bargain Wine Books

There’s little doubt, in the prolonged US economic malaise we’re experiencing, that “value wine” and “bargain wine” are hot topics.  Heck, an entire channel of business has been defined with “Flash” wine sale sites.  Given that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a couple of wine books would be published with this specific focus.

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What is a surprise is that the books are authored by wine writers with real chops engaged in offering a deeper narrative than the slapdash compendiums of wine lists that has passed muster in years gone by.
Just in time for the holidays, Natalie MacLean has Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines publishing on November 1st and George Taber, a wine writer on a tear with his fourth book in six years, has A Toast to Bargain Wines: How Innovators, Iconoclasts, and Winemaking Revolutionaries Are Changing the Way the World Drinks publishing on November 15th.

An Idea worth Duplicating?

Celebrity deaths come in threes and new wine ideas come in twos.

We’ve seen this duplicative market entry in recent years with winery reservation systems CellarPass and VinoVisit and now we’re seeing it with quasi-wine search engines.

WineMatch and VinoMatch are both in the early stages of launch purporting to help a consumer match their likes with wines they might enjoy.

Meh.  The problem with these sites isn’t that consumers don’t need help finding a wine they like, the problem is that most wine consumers don’t understand what kind of wine they like.  Yes, it’s the tannins that dry the back of the mouth and its residual sugar that makes that K-J so delectable…

By the time consumers figure out their likes and dislikes graduating beyond the “go-to,” they don’t care about having somebody help them “match” their wines to their tastes because they’re on their own adventure.

It’s just my opinion, but these sites face looooong odds of finding consumer success and short of the slick willy seduction that happens with some wineries who haven’t been bitten and as such aren’t twice shy, they won’t find *any* success.  But, I’ve been wrong before, at least once.

Pictures and Pithiness

While we’re on the topic of online wine services, I’m not sure whether I should be happy or aghast that I’ve been a habitué of the online wine scene for long enough to see a derivative – it’s like watching a remake of the movie Footloose when I was saw the original in the theatre.

There’s a new wine site called TasteJive that takes the concept of a wine blog called Chateau Petrogasm, popular in 2007 and 2008, to new heights.

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Around the premise that a picture is worth a thousand words even if that picture has nothing to do with wine, they have created a site that provides nothing but visual metaphors with a 140 character description for finding wines you might like.

I loved the idea of Chateau Petrogasm, I like the idea of a perfectly crafted 140 character slug, but I’m very uncertain about the community aspect of TasteJive—the users who control the uploading of pictures and descriptions.

As noted mid-20th century photographer Diane Arbus said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

Not exactly a recipe for success in bumping into a wine.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_media_edition/

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Charles Shaw: What A Long Strange Trip It?s Been

This week stories about the 10 year anniversary of Charles Shaw wines began to hit the news. If there is a single wine brand I get asked about by people not into wine, it’s this Trader Joe’s success story. The funny thing is the story of Charles Shaw started over 35 years ago but few [...]

Charles Shaw: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Tasting Leelanau 2012 ? Tandem Ciders & Left Foot Charley

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE I first noticed Tandem Ciders on someone?s Facebook posting, and with just a little bit of investigation, realized that this would have to be must-visit for Kim and this taster. We?ve found that we have an affinity for artisanal ciders, and the scuttlebutt about this Suttons Bay producer was all positive, [...]

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