2022 Balcombe Vineyard Pinot Noir

96 Points, Jeb Dunnuck

Winemaking: Fermentations were managed exclusively by pigeages to ensure gentle handling, extraction, and delicate tannin construction. Cold soaks were generally 4 days across all eight fermenters. Full fermentation from beginning to pressing was 17-18 days. A 48-hour settling of pressed wine occurred prior to being racked to barrel. All wines were on full lees until assemblage for bottling. Bottled without fining or filtration.

Barrels: This 19-barrel bottling (the largest Balcombe bottling in several years) consists of only 3 new barrels (16%), a large selection (11) of once filled barrels  (58%) and the balance being neutral barrels (26%). Wine was in barrel until late July and bottled in late August allowing for around 9 months in barrel.

Notes: Balcombe Vineyard is our quintessential Dundee Hills AVA bottling. At over 30 years of vine-age it has the capacity to show the specific characteristics that make wines from this region so compelling. 2022 is a SENSATIONAL year in the Dundee Hills and our flagship wine of that AVA is on full display in this bottling. The fruit is bright, fresh, and intense without being too intense or sweet for its acidity and structure. The overall impression of the wine is one of incredible texture, managing to be silky and graceful without feeling overly polished. The structure of the acidity and tannin is generous but impeccably balanced allowing for a seemingly forward and youthfully approachable wine to age gracefully for more than 20 years in most vintages and likely well past that mark in this unusual but grand vintage.

The wine finished with numbers of a TA of 5.6, a pH of 3.49, a free sulfur level below 30 ppm and a total sulfur below 75 ppm.