Ask most wine experts about the agebility of the top wines in the world and you will likely hear the names of Burgundy and Bordeaux as the front running cellar-worthy examples. It isn't uncommon that these wines continue to develop for a century (in the best vintages). However when the discussion comes around to domestic producers, the tendency is to give a wine a dozen or so years to reach a point where you would probably want to drink it. (I even find myself doing this!)
When I am down in San Francisco, It is a great opportunity to get together with a neighbor who is a winemaker. Jamie Kutch arrived on the domestic wine scene only a few years ago after giving up on the world of high finance in New York to pursue his dream of making wine and has built a loyal following for his first vintages. I have had several evenings of tastings with Jamie and other Pinot Noir lovers over the past couple years where we will drink esoteric wines from the 60's through the most current barrel samples.
Last evening, I attended an event that was truly memorable - the discussions of the wines we tasted largely point to blowing apart the myth of how well some California wines can age and then some. Eleven of us got together at a French Bistro in SOMA to taste through forty years of California Pinot Noir. We began, quite auspiciously with the 1968 Hanzell Pinot Noir Sonoma Valley that went into the collection of one of America's top authorities on wine in 1971. The shockingly youthful characteristics of this wine were astounding, The consensus was that this wine looked, smelled and tasted like it was perhaps three or four years old. In the following flights we tasted such examples as 1980 Mount Eden from Santa Cruz Mountains; a wine that raised many eyebrows when it was released at nearly $40.00 in 1982 and 1982 Chalone. Both of these were holding together very well I thought. Some of the wines, like a 1979 Kalin were well past their prime.
If you have a cellar with some older California Pinot Noir, get together with some friends and crack a few open. If your experience was anywhere close to mine you won't be disappointed.
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