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I’ve got to give these guys some credit: they’ve done what I didn’t think was possible.

That’s right.

They made a Russian River Pinot Noir that I don’t like.

Now, the way I see it, if you’ve got good fruit — which most of the Russian River area seems to produce — then the winemaker pretty much just needs to stay out of the way while plying his/her trade and the wine will be pretty good. So I don’t really know what happened here, because these are good winemakers (some of their other wines are outstanding). There is no vineyard designant here, so I would assume that the winemakers, who are respectable Santa Cruz Mountains winemakers, were purchasing leftover fruit from a variety of vineyards in the Russian River area. I think, possibly, they were a tad late to the game and the fruit was overripe. Either that or it was just B-Grade fruit.

There’s a cloying sweetness here that immediately suggests orange blossom honey. It’s a tad sticky or syrupy on the tongue like a port or a late harvest zin. It has none of the cola, forest floor and mineral aspects that are generally way up front in Russian River Pinots. In fact, this stuff doesn’t even feel or taste like a Pinot at all.  It’s not crisp or vivid like a good Pinot can be; instead it feels kind of flabby and dull.   The bottle’s not corked– there’s none of the telltale chlorine or must that comes in a corked bottle– but there is an aftertaste of… I dunno… I want to say vomit, but it’s nowhere near that bad. Maybe”essence of vomit” would be more accurate. Or maybe it’s “essence of moldy grape”. I think that’s it. It’s not an overpowering essence, because this stuff is still drinkable, but it’s there.

I was going to say “fumunda cheese” but thought it might be too harsh though only slightly inaccurate. I am not loaded enough or mean enough to offer a definition of fumunda cheese here.

But, it has some redeeming qualities: for one, there’s alcohol in it. Not a lot, at 13.5%, but it’s there. If I drink the whole bottle (which is likely, if not guaranteed), it’ll probably start tasting pretty good by the end. Another redeeming quality is the price: at $27 it was cheaper than a lot of Russian River Pinots. On the downside of that, you can get a bottle of 05 J Vineyards Pinot for $22 bucks, and that stuff is outstanding. So fuck that, price is not a redeeming quality here. The nose isn’t bad– if you like honey in a Pinot, and it’s definitely a unique-tasting Pinot. You could easily pick it out from a group of other Pinots in a blind tasting. But you probably wouldn’t pick it as your favorite. In fact, I think you’d pick it as a Zin.

So let’s see… score. Well, it gets 20 points for having alcohol. I’m going to give it another 40 for being drinkable and somewhat unique. Another 20 because the winemakers are from the Santa Cruz area, even if they’re on the wrong side of the mountains. Another 10 because the family behind the vineyard has the same last name as my Grandfather. But then I’m going to take away 25 points for not tasting anything like a Russian River Pinot.

(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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