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In many ways the Pisoni Vineyard has become our most consistent source of Pinot Noir. Every year the vines are well taken care of, the fruit ripens completely, and the wine almost makes itself. Moreover, the wine always tastes like… well, like Pisoni. At some point the only question that remains is how the new vintage of Pisoni stacks up against previous wines.
In our opinion, the 2000 Siduri Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir stacks up quite well against our previous three Pisoni wines. It is certainly superior to the 1997 wine and, we think, better than the 1998. The 1999 is a wonderful wine and so only time will tell if the 2000 is superior to it.
Certainly, the 2000 growing season was different than 1999. Everything was earlier in 2000. Bud break and flowering were a month earlier than in 1999, veraison was at least 3 weeks earlier and harvest occurred on September 11, 2000 (26 days earlier than in 1999). As always, Gary Pisoni (and his son, Jeff) did a fantastic job with the vines, both in shoot thinning and color thinning. We personally spent an additional day in the vineyard near the end of veraison color thinning one more time. This additional thinning helped assure that the fruit developed evenly and that only completely ripe grapes would go into the wine. We ultimately harvested approximately 9.6 tons of Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir (a yield of less than 2.9 tons per acre) on September 11, 2000. Sugars were high, averaging 25.7 brix, and the grapes' flavors were wonderful. We destemmed them all and placed them in a tank, one ton bins, and half ton bins.
After a four day cold soak several of the bins began to ferment on their own. Never ones to mess with a good thing we let them continue fermenting on their native yeasts. We did inoculate some of the bins and the tank with two different cultured yeasts, RC212 and Assmannshausen. At the conclusion of fermentation we pressed the wine to approximately 60% new oak with the majority of that oak coming from the Marsannay cooperage house. The wine was not racked, instead, it remained in these barrels until it was bottled unfined and unfiltered.
The 2000 Siduri Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir is overflowing with the vineyard's characteristic black raspberry and blackberry fruit aromas. In the mouth the wine is thick with fruit as well as flavors of Chinese tea and a toasty vanillin character from the oak. This wine is pure hedonistic California Pinot Noir at its finest!
PRODUCTION: 587 cases
RELEASE DATE: April, 2002
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