2015 Pinot Noir Thieriot Vineyard Estate

My annual visit with Ted Lemon was one of the highlights of the ten days I spent in Sonoma earlier this year. The range of single-vineyard Pinots and Chardonnays are essays into the great terroirs of the Sonoma Coast and Anderson Valley. The 2016 Pinots are stunning for their aromatic depth and crystalline precision, while the 2015s, from a much richer vintage, are quite different in style, but every bit as compelling. Readers will find two superb back to back vintages in the Littorai 2016 and 2015 Pinots. The Chardonnays are a bit more difficult to grasp. Some of the 2016s had been racked into tank a few days before my visit, while the 2015s appear to be still in a state of bottle shock. None of that should be a huge issue over time. Still, I give a slight nod to Pinot over Chardonnay for consistency across both vintages. Ted Lemon describes 2016 as a year with relatively normal flowering and even maturation. Harvest took place over five full weeks. In 2015, on the other hand, protracted flowering led to uneven levels of ripeness in the field, which, in turn, made picking decisions challenging. All the fruit came in during a very compact period of just 20 days.

(Originally published in Sonoma Preview: January 2018 New Releases)

This is a remarkable set of wines from Littorai and Ted Lemon. The 2015 Pinots are unusually rich and yet they also retain a good deal of brightness. In some cases, the personality of the vintage overpowers site, but in others the character of place comes through nicely. As good as the Pinots are in 2015, the Chardonnays might be even better. According to Lemon, the vines went into both the 2014 and 2015 growing seasons with drought conditions. This was especially evident in 2015, when the cumulative effects of several back-back drought years finally caught up with the vines. Moisture retentive Goldridge soils did better, while mountain sites were more challenged. That comes through in the wines as well. Poor weather during set decimated production. For many wines, yields are Burgundy-like in size. The bottled 2014s are every bit as compelling as they were last year. A number of those wines have shut down post bottling, which is to be expected. In other news. Lemon is no longer buying fruit from Platt. Littorai fans will note the addition of a new wine from Wendling, in Anderson Valley. Lemon has been buying fruit from Wendling for a few years, but 2015 is the first vintage in which it is a vineyard designate.