94points
2021 Dijon Clone, Estate Pinot Noir
Tasting Notes
You may have met my sister (the Pommard clone) by now. What can I say; she’s flashy, juicy and lush. I know what they say about me, “She’s more reserved and mercurial, blah, blah, blah.” But give me time and once I unwind . . . watch out. Layers of dense dark fruit entwined with more spice than I know what to do with. Like I said, give me time . . . but don’t miss your chance.
Wine Score
94
The 2021 Dijon Clone Estate Selection Pinot Noir is pale to medium ruby-purple in color. It skips out with cheery notes of red roses, pomegranate, and fresh cranberries leading to hints of lilacs, graphite, and black tea. The medium to full-bodied palate is perfumed and pretty, with a lively backbone and fine-grained tannins supporting the vivacious red berry layers, finishing with a minerally lift.
Lisa Perotti Brown - The Wine Independent
Description
Bouchaine’s 100-acre estate vineyard lies on the southern border of Napa Valley’s Carneros district, overlooking the San Francisco bay with the financial district in the distance. Fog, wind, and the cold nightime temperatures of this unique geographical area lend a distinctive regional identity to our Pinot Noir.
Growing Season
The 2021 growing season will be remembered as a winemaker’s vintage. Not too cold, not too hot, not too wet, and no frost. However, we were in the grips of a multiyear drought. While we enjoy dry farming when we have average rainfall, in vintages where the rainfall is half of average (like 2021) we do irrigate to allow for ideal shoot growth and ripening. Bouchaine is lucky to have a huge reservoir so we were able to irrigate early in the season to get our vine canopies full. Drought conditions do have some positives when it comes to winemaking as they bring us smaller berries with beautifully concentrated flavors at harvest. We also lucked out with consistent weather throughout the summer giving us ideal ripening at an even pace. A little sun, a bit of water, and a lot of hard work in the vineyard allowed us to bring in a killer 2021 vintage!
Vinification
All fruit is hand-harvested at night, preserving berry integrity. After a 7-day cold soak, fruit is fermented with native yeast in open top tanks. The wine is then drawn off and the must is placed into a basket press for gentle pressing. All wines complete malolactic fermentation in French oak barrels. The vineyard blocks are kept separate for evaluation with the most intriguing blocks racked together in late Spring to assemble the finest expression of the Dijon clones from our estate. The blend is returned to barrel to allow the wine to marry before bottling.
Tech Sheet
