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Holy Mother of God and a Mackerel, Kanzler stepped up to the plate, pointed to McCovey Cove, took a swing and plunked 300 stitches of wine love right into a kayaker’s mouth. Giant’s fans will understand the analogy, the rest of you are going to have to do the research on your own, but here’s a summary for the masses:What baseball analogy is about to ensue when your date hops into the backseat of your ‘65 Mustang after hanging her panties from the rearview mirror?Home fuckin’ run. Long ball. Upper decks in most parks, a shotgun marriage in others.Those of you who don’t know Kanzler may recognize a wine that made the vineyard famous: Kosta Browne put out a knockdown, drag-out, award-winning and ridiculously coveted Pinot from this very same vineyard a couple of years back. Then, starting in 2004, the Kanzlers (Steve and Lynda) got with winemaker Greg Stach and started producing their own wine from their estate vineyard near Sebastopol, which is at the epicenter of what I consider to be Pinot Mecca. Forget about Oregon. Well… nah, I can’t really say that… but forget about Oregon for the next 10 minutes while you digest this concept: the Russian River and Sonoma Coast areas are where it’s at, in this Dago’s opinion.I actually prefer this 2006 vintage to the Kosta Browne version I sampled a couple of years back. That, pretty much, should say it all. But, me being me, I think I’m going to ramble on a bit more.In the last several years, as Oregon and California Pinot has enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame, a lot of wineries have started putting out Pinots that seem to be making an effort to appeal to Cabernet converts. Big, inky, over ripe fruit bomb Pinots. While he makes some of the world’s finest wines, I think Michael Browne is especially guilty of this even though he manages to pull it off somehow. But that’s not what I’m looking for in a Pinot. If I want a fruit bomb, I’ll drink a zin or a cab. If I want ink or spice, I’ll drink a Syrah. In a Pinot, I’m looking for nuance. In no other varietal that I can think of is terroir more prevalent than Pinot Noir, and I just don’t like it when they bury that with over ripeness or heavy-handed winemaking.This Kanzler ‘06 is outstanding because it’s so crisp. It’s fresh as a just-showered barely-legal snatch. Nice and clean, glistening, just begging you to bury your face in its…Ooops, I got a little sidetracked there.Anyway, the color on this glorious nectar is a nice, medium-to-light rose with a hint of amber. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were looking at a 15 year old Bordeaux in the glass. But the lighter color is in no way a reflection on this wine’s concentration: weighing in at 14.6 ABV, it’s got some muscle. The nose is all over the map, though not as much as say a MacPhail Toulouse– something I love in good Pinots– with just-ripe cherry, maybe huckleberry and light shots of cola and redwood humus. Lots of character, not all fruit. On the palate it’s crisp and bright, not overwhelming, really food-friendly; yet without food you get to sit back and enjoy layer after layer of nuanced goodness exploding across the “old factory” (as my Dad calls the combination of nose and tastebuds).I’m relieved, because I experienced mixed results on their earlier vintages. I’ve had 3: the ‘05 reserve, the ‘05 and the ‘04 reserve. I can remember 2 of them, I absolutely loved one, but found the other one to be bloated and kind of flabby. Too big. I can’t remember which was which, but the flabby one was one of the Reserve wines, because I drank it as part of a special occasion that I had saved the Reserve for. So I ordered the ‘06 not quite knowing what kind of wine to expect.I think, maybe, the troubles they had in the vineyard in ‘06 ended up working to their benefit– reading the info on the Kanzler website, it seems that they were worried during the cool late summer of ‘06 in Sabastopol that the fruit wouldn’t ripen in time because of the cold, foggy weather that year. Then they got a late-season warm snap that brought the fruit to just-ripeness, and they harvested. The result is a wine that’s perfectly ripe, aldente even, rather than too soggy and bloated. So mother nature caused them to re-think their plan, which resulted in outstanding, if unexpected, returns.OK, on a BoozeReviews sliding scale I’m going to give this one an even hundo. That’s One Large, black outside, as they say in Vegas. Then I’m going to deduct 2 for the flabby “reserve” I drank a year ago, just on principle.

(5 votes, average: 4.8 out of 5)

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