2003 Pinot Noir, Solomon Hills Vineyard
Specifications
- Appellation Santa Maria Valley AVA
- Bottling Date September 12, 2003
- Country USA
- Harvest Date September 2002
- Region Santa Barbara County
- Type Still
- Varietal Pinot Noir
- Vineyard Solomon Hills Vineyard
- Vintage 2003
- Winemaker Norm Yost
Production Notes
Pinot Noir clone 113; 124 cases produced.
Tasting Notes
This is a complex wine that needed a little more time to fully develop. It has a dark crimson color and a beautiful clarity and a bouquet of black cherry and plum, with subtle nuances of leather, and spice and that characteristic Santa Maria nose of sunny meadows on a warm day. The fruit is big on the palate, with red plums, toasty notes of vanilla and a bit of cherry cola. The texture is mouth-coating, with firm tannins, a nice balance of acidity and a lingering, round finish. A wine that is delightful now, but will continue to improve with age for the next 3-5 years.
Vineyard Notes
Solomon Hills is a relatively new vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley, planted in 1999 and under the stewardship of the Bien Nacido vineyard crew. One of the coolest vineyard sites in the area, Solomon Hills nestles in a beautiful swale off of Highway 101 and Bradley Road, just southwest of the Bien Nacido Vineyard. The vineyard is divided into four different blocks with each of these planted to a specific clone and rootstock best suited to soil type and microclimate. 2003 is the second year the vineyard is producing crop and we are very excited to have an opportunity to make wine from this site. We harvested 1.63 tons of Pinot Noir (clone 113) from two different vineyard blocks in mid-September 2003.
Winemaker Notes
Upon delivery to the winery, the grapes were de-stemmed into two small open top fermenters for a short cold soak. We kept the grapes from each block separate, and then punched down each lot twice per day. The slurry of juice and skins, the “must”, was inoculated with a cultured yeast, and after primary fermentation had completed, the free run juice was gravity fed into barrel, and the skins lightly pressed. All five barrels of wine then underwent malolactic fermentation and the wines were stirred once every couple of months to extract texture from the lies. Our Solomon Hills wine was bottled after 11 months of aging, but needed some aging time in bottle for the flavors to fully integrate and marry.