2024 Wood Family Vineyards Pinot Noir
Photo ©Michael Kelly
Background on Pinot Noir
The name Pinot Noir derives from the French words “pine” and “black” as the grape’s tight pine cone clusters and dark color. Pinot Noir has origins dating back to the first century AD. Roman’s most likely expanded the plantings of Pinot Noir during their empire reign. The phylloxera crisis devastated vineyards across France and did not spare Pinot Noir. In the following years, many Pinot Noir clones were introduced with each having specific attributes including resistance to certain diseases, yield levels, distinct aromatics and flavor profiles. The most notable clones commonly found today are 115, 667 and 777.
Geographically, California Pinot Noir presents more upfront fruit flavors, ripeness and a fuller body due to the warmer climate. Oregon, with its cooler climate, has a subtler fruit with pronounced earthy and mineral qualities.
In California Pinot Noir is the second largest harvest of red wine grapes, being 8% of the tons crushed at 218,024. Number one being Cabernet Sauvignon with 454,608 or 16%. Zinfandel followed in 3rd position with 201,642 tons from the final 2024 California Grape Crush Report. The latest numbers show Pinot Noir being the 5th most planted red wine grape in the world.
The Wine – “Wine is bottled poetry” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Photo ©Michael Kelly
The grapes for this Pinot Noir come from the Nella Terra vineyard located at the top of the Sunol grade. This area gets the cool breezes from the San Francisco Bay in the late afternoon and is typically much cooler than Livermore Valley, but both being in Alameda County.
Photo ©Michael Kelly
On the eyes a semi-transparent ruby red coloring and medium viscosity. On the nose red berries and tart cranberries are dominant. On the palate the wine provides a mouthful of texture along with the strawberry and cherry fruits. On the finish, a slight tartness provides the classical puckering in the mouth as well as the fruit counterbalanced with pepper and clove.
Photo ©Michael Kelly
This is their second vintage of Pinot Noir and will be available at the end of July or beginning of August, just in time for summer enjoyment. Only 61 cases were produced. Aged 9 months in 100% neutral French barrels, one new and one neutral. One unique process was saving about 10-15% of the grapes as full grape clusters without destemming. This was added to the destemmed fruit for fermentation to increase the complexity and fruitiness of the wine. The wine will be sold at $50/bottle. The wine comes in at 13.9% alcohol.
The Food and Wine Pairing – “Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost. United and well matched, they are as body and soul: living partners” – Andre Simon
Photo ©Michael Kelly
Chose this wine to pair this evening with two different sausages. The first being an Italian spicy beef sausage and the other being a pork sausage stuffed with Gouda cheese and Jalapeños. This Pinot Noir was selected as it goes with Gouda cheese and has plenty of acidity to cut through both beef and pork sausages. Accompanied by French fried potatoes. The wine was served cold and was a welcome companion to the spicy Italian sausage and the jalapeño stuffed sausage. This wine, in my opinion, is definitely a food wine as opposed to a standalone drinking wine as it wholly enhanced the food this evening.
The Winery
Photo from Wood Family Vineyards website
Wood Family Vineyards, located in eastern Livermore Valley, with Rhonda Wood owner & winemaker, has been producing award winning wines for over two decades. You can read more on her background from airline pilot to award winning winemaker at:
https://californiawinesandwineries.com/2016/02/10/wood-family-vineyards-2/
and
Her awards are extensive and too numerous to list here in this article and would refer you to their website at the bottom of this article.
Sláinte,
Michael