While many view the 2008 vintage as "classic" it is the 2009 Willamette Valley vintage that seems to be
garnering the raves from those customers of ours that normally drink California Pinot Noir. The wines in
2009 are riper, fuller, and much more immediately forward, making them perfect matches for those customers
with more "New World" palates.
What truly distinguishes 2009 in our minds is the crop size. Despite limiting the crop to 1 cluster per
shoot, yields were still far higher than normal as every berry seemed to set on every cluster and the average
cluster weights were huge. Given this situation, dropping more fruit on the ground made no sense,
so we chose to harvest all of the fruit and then bleed off ("saignee") some of the juice to restore a proper
skin-to-juice ratio to the grapes. Depending on the total yield we bled off 15-25% of the juice.
The 2009 Siduri Chehalem Mountains Pinot Noir is a blend of 47% Shaw Mountain Vineyard, 22%
Hawk's View Vineyard, 16% Beran Vineyard, and 15% Arbre Vert Vineyard fruit. As such it is also a
blend of Pommard, Wadenswil, 115, and 777 clone Pinot Noirs. This combination of clones and vineyard
sites allowed us to maximize the complexity of this wine in a vintage that already possessed remarkably
forward fruit.
The 2009 Siduri Chehalem Mountains Pinot Noir is deceptively light in color and yet, once in the mouth
the wine shows tremendous richness and complexity. The wine shows somewhat darker flavors than the
2008 with more blueberry and dark, even chocolate covered cherry flavor. On the mid-palate the wine
shows some vanilla from the oak, but also a rich fruit character and hints of herbs and spice. There is also
good acidity on the finish. While this wine will certainly improve for a few years, it may be so precocious
that it will be difficult to cellar it.
Cases: 1585
Released: November 2010
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