07 Ketcham Estate – The Missing Tasting Notes
The following tasting notes were missing from my recent shipment of 07 Ketcham Estate Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, so I thought I’d do the winery a favor and post them here:
Greetings dedicated allocation buyers! It never ceases to boggle my mind how infinitely wise and amazingly handsome you are, especially you Juanote. I hear you’re well-hung too.
Well, 2007 was a banner year for most of us making Russian River and Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. Unfortunately, you won’t recognize that immediately in our 2007 Russian River blend. In fact, you probably shouldn’t open it yet. In fact, on second thought, you definitely shouldn’t open it yet, unless you have an affinity for the tightness of nun’s assholes. We added so much tartaric acid to this shit that you could substitute it for the cran part of a vodka cran, and the tannins will definitely need some time to get tired of kicking the shit out of those cranberries.
So please, do yourself a favor and just savor the anticipation of opening one of these bottles. Stare at them in your cellar. Talk about them with friends. Let the dust settle in on them. But whatever you do, don’t actually drink one for at least another year. One day each and every one of these bottles is probably going to be phenomenal enough to jizz thy jeans. Or at least, we like to think so.
But hey, it sure does smell good though!
So there you go. If you must drink one now, decant it and have some stanky cheese handy. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure these will be worth the wait if you sit on them for awhile. Their last vintage was the same way: I really didn’t like it when it was new, but I absolutely loved it a year later.
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Thank you Juanote for the new post, I was close to killing myself after having to see that Heimoff shit first thing every time I checked in on Boozereviews. Sounds like many of the 2007’s are tightly wound, must be the nuns’ influence. Don’t think we will be cracking those Rivers Marie single vineyards for quite some time.
Based on my impression of some of the KB wines, I would say that Michael Browne can be a little heavy handed with the tartaric. Seems like the ’04s in particular were a mess of tartaric, even now, trying to compensate for overripe fruit. I suppose it is not as easy to just pick sooner? Have you seen Parker’s use of the word “Spoofulated”?
What’s spoofulated?
Basically a wine that is over manipulated. Exactly how you determine what qualifies, I have no idea. From the source:
http://www.datamantic.com/joedressner/comment/1788/
3 days after receiving my shipment, I received the following email from the winery:
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Give the Wines a Few Weeks’ Rest. As many of you know, we bottle all of our pinots in February, a bit later than most producers who bottle in August of the previous year. We believe the additional age in barrel allows our wines to integrate better and round out. It also means the wines have had less time to settle down from the rigors of the bottling process. Add to this the fact that your wines have been moved around during the shipping trip, and you are left with some confused and jostled pinots. So please, give them a few weeks to settle and slumber; they will be happy to have a vacation and in return, you will be more pleased when you open them.
Anticipate the Ketcham Vineyard. The 2007 vintage is, in my opinion, the finest overall vintage in the brief history of California pinot noir. The wines are broad, balanced and intense. The heightened intensity of our 2007 Ketcham Vineyard necessitates a longer time to integrate. I would not consider opening a bottle until the fall of 2009, at which time you can begin to enjoy it. Ideally, I would wait until this time next year. However, if you are too anxious and really need to try the wine, I would suggest a good vigorous decant at least two hours before you pour. I think the wine will really begin to integrate this time next year and improve over the next 5 years.
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Summary: don’t open the RRV blend for a few weeks. Don’t open the Ketcham Vineyard until fall of this year.
So it’s now 4 months since my initial review, so I decided to check back in on the RRV (not the Ketcham Vineyard) 07, and I’m finding it really enjoyable. It’s (how can I say this without sounding like a complete ass?)… deep and focused. Rich with dark cherry notes and a little bit of baking chocolate, then with that oh so nice parmesan cheese cream in the finish. Not as wild and layered as my favorite MacPhail pinots, but a solid wine to be sure, and one that would probably be preferred by those who like more straightforward pinots.
After about an hour of air time, this one really opened up and turned into one hell of a bottle of wine. A really exceptional wine. Memorable.