2011 Archery Summit Pinot Noir Arcus Estate

Archery Summit’s 2011 Pinot Noir Arcus Estate is another of their wines of this vintage to evince blue fruit character – blueberry and boysenberry, initially tinged with sandalwood and cardamom – that I don’t often find in this vintage. Fresh ginger and black pepper offer invigorating inflection, yet don’t detract at all from the underlying soothing influence of a polished, silken texture. A humus-like note and tincture of iodine contribute some darkness and intrigue – and a hint of caramel complimentary sweetness – to a lusciously long finish. Winemaker Chris Mazepink, incidentally – who was not responsible for any of the 2011s here, and was less enthusiastic about the vintage in general than other growers and vintners I interviewed – says this Arcus Estate reminds him more of a 2010 in its combination of polish and volume with energy and structure, and he thinks it will reveal a site-typical floral dimension after a few years in bottle. I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to follow it through at least 2020. This March, Archery Summit experienced its fourth changing of the winemaking guard, as Chris Mazepink – previously at Benton Lane and Shea – replaced Anna Matzinger, about whose influence and successes there I wrote at length in Issue 202, and who was responsible for the 2011s I tasted this summer. I was surprised to hear Mazepink characterize the 2011 vintage as “slightly fragile and frail as a whole” – he much prefers 2010 – but he admitted to limited experience; and he puts great emphasis on textural richness. Still, his characterization certainly doesn’t apply to many wines that I tasted for this report, even if there were instances in the present collection where I had a sense that perhaps more fermentative extraction and exposure to new wood had been attempted than was in a wine’s best interests. (Since five out of seven wines here are routinely bottled before the following harvest, they in fact received a significantly shorter than usual elevage this vintage.) Matzinger, incidentally, stuck by her selective but often substantial inclusion of stems and whole clusters. (Considerable detail concerning the Archery Summit vineyard sites and what I now must refer to as Matzinger’s legacy can be found in my Issue 202 introduction.) Tel. (503) 864.4300