2016 Pinot Noir Treehouse

These are two gorgeous, expressive Pinots from Michael Browne’s CIRQ label. It will be fascinating to see where Browne takes CIRQ in the coming years now that he exclusively focused on this project. My own impression is that these wines haven’t yet reached their maximum potential. I say that because the quality I have seen in barrel doesn’t always end up with the same purity in bottle.

Kosta Browne is in the middle of a dramatic and ambitious stylistic transformation that has seen the Pinots go from being the poster children of fruit bombs to wines of far greater restraint. Needless to say, that is not easy to pull off, nor will it be achieved without some bumps.

The 2016 Pinots are frankly perplexing. Winemaker Nico Cueva told me he backed off the whole clusters, as he wanted to fully showcase the personality of each site. I don’t really see that in the wines. Many of the Pinots are extremely closed down and give the impression of lacking fruit intensity, depth and character. It’s hard to know exactly why that is. Cueva has made a number of adjustments over the last few years, including using a greater percentage of large format oak and cement in aging, moving towards ambient yeasts for the single-vineyard wines and generally pursuing a more hands-off approach. All of that is admirable, but there is no getting around the fact that the 2016 Pinots are very hard to taste today. Perhaps the wines will blossom in bottle. Or, maybe Cueva pushed the envelope too far. We will see. The best advice I can give Vinous readers is to taste the wines before buying them. I say that knowing full well that the way these wines are sold makes that virtually impossible.

Lastly, readers will note the addition of five new Pinots in the range. Cerise is Kosta Browne's estate vineyard in Anderson Valley. Mt. Carmel is a long-term lease in Santa Barbara, while the Thorn Ridge is sourced from a high-altitude site on the Mendocino Ridge. The Bootlegger's Hill and Treehouse are the KB selection of barrels from sites that were once shared with Michael Browne's CIRQ label. Beginning in 2017 those two sites revert to KB fully.