Keeping Score
2005 was my first vintage at Patton Valley Vineyard. It was a tough one. Intense disease pressure all summer long. Cool and wet weather at harvest forced us to condense our picking to a few days between rain. When we got dry days we picked and stayed up all night processing the fruit.
In barrel the wines showed what I thought was intense fruit, great depth and brooding complexity. All of this buried beneath an aggressive tannic core. Time smoothed things out and going to bottle I was very proud of the the wines. I had been with them every step of the way, I knew where they were weak and what made them strong. I was proud but I knew they weren't perfect.
We do a small reserve blend, all from our estate, a mere 90 cases, the Cuvee Lorna-Marie. It gives me an opportunity to show just what our vineyard can do in a given season. It is meant to be the best wine we can make.
Last week Harvey Steinman of the Wine Spectator ( online ) gave the 2005 Patton Valley Vineyard Cuvee Lorna-Marie Pinot Noir 94 points. The next day my e-mail was packed with people inquiring about the wine. Wine buyers who had tasted the wine, sometimes on numerous occasions, were now wanting to get some. New customers faxed, called and e-mailed. I was being congratulated by friends around town. My bosses were thrilled.
I have met Harvey and I believe he carries himself in a very professional manner. I will admit, that like most wine makers, I have mixed feelings about wine critics and the 100 point scale. I will not raise Harvey or any other wine writer to the level of villain, include them in some sort of conspiracy theory or blame them for the current state of wine. They have a job to do, and they do it. I sent him the wine and am glad he liked it.
It is the same wine it was before it got the 94 points. It is the same wine I punched down twice a day during fermentation. The same wine I topped weekly and racked carefully. The same wine that hung on those vines all summer, threatened by powdery mildew. More flattering than the 94 points have been the comments from fellow wine makers, customers and sommeliers. To be honest I always believed in the wine. I had a sort of secret crush on it, I loved it. Deep down inside I honestly believed that it wasn't just good but great.
It is good to know that some else does too.
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3 Comments
Reader Comments (3)
Point or no points, you are right that its nice when someone else sees what you see in a wine.
i think that's something WS readers should see. why don't you send it to them - maybe they'll print it...
Truth be told I don't want to push my luck by asking too much of the Wine Spectator, they have obviously been good to me. I had a hard time writing the post actually. At first I felt like I was just standing up and shouting "look at me and my 94 points", it made be a bit uncomfortable. Another option was to take the sarcastic approach and complain that the wine "only got 94 points when I could of swore it was a 96". I have found that that kind of humor doesn't translate well on the web and feared folks would take me seriously. In the end I called it like I saw it, I felt the wine was great and Harvey agreed. I try not to lean on these scores to much, things could always change.