I just returned from the 5th annual Hospices of Sonoma Pinot Noir barrel auction for 2007 vintage wines. Thirty-four wineries brought barrel samples to the Santa Rosa Jet Center on Saturday afternoon where the guests were able to mingle with the winemakers and bid on individual cases of special one-of-a-kind wines, or walk away with five cases for a fixed price. As with last year, Kosta Browne received the top bid and newcomer Jamie Kutch topped $1000 per case for his first year at the event.
My impressions of the 2007 vintage at this stage are not as enthusiastic as they were for the 2006 vintage. Vinfolio grabbed seven of the top lots last year including Kosta Browne and Radio Coteau. I am optimistic from talking with several producers that the vintage is very young at this point (one wine seemed to still be going through fermentation) and very few were showing well enough to grab my attention at this time.
The top three lots for me were: (Links are to our current inventory, or producer page of these wines)
Capiaux - A Widdoes Vineyard based wine from Sean Capiaux showed excellent balance and was the favorite of many friends I polled
Donum Russian River - Anne Moller Racke and Kenneth Juhasz sample was tasting in beautifully. We currently have the 2005 Carneros bottling in stock and look forward to the release of 2006 Russian River in the coming months
Patz & Hall - Anne Moses was pouring an eye-popping example of Jenkins Ranch, a bottling never sold outside the winery
Personally I missed the energy of the live auction during dinner and hope the organizers will bring it back for next year. The weekend began Friday evening with a small dinner for 50 in the caves of Freeman Winery co-hosted by Ken and Akiko Freeman and their winemaker, Ed Kurtzman along with Michael Browne and Chris Costello from Kosta Browne. This was a great opportunity to reconnect with people I might only see once a year as well as have generous pours of both Freeman and Kosta Browne to enjoy. The final event was a Paulee on Sunday afternoon held at the beautiful Lynmar Winery. If you ever get over there, the gardens are beautiful and you can sip on a delicious Chardonnay and lose yourself staring at the vineyards. More great wines were poured at the Paulee in an endless parade of excess. Jamie Kutch had one of his last remaining bottles of 1966 Louis Martini Pinot Noir still showing glimpses of fruit. The day was too hot for the wines to not begin falling apart on the tables after a few minutes and they along with the guests could have used some shade because temps were in the high 80's.
Be sure to visit the Vinfolio website for our current availability of the 2006 Pinot Noir from Hospices of Sonoma.
(You may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)