1997 Pinot Noir Estate Russian River Valley

Tom Dehlinger's wines are classic manifestations of the Goldridge formation, a band of marine sediment of volcanic origin (featuring clay, gravel and fine sand) stretching from the Santa Rosa plain in the east to the Coast Range in the west, and bounded on the north by the Russian River. All of Dehlinger's wines come from his own 45 acres of estate vines. Dehlinger picks late for maximum ripeness. "If we picked on sugars alone, the fruit flavors would lack richness and ripeness," notes Dehlinger. Still, pHs tend to be on the low side, thanks in part to the fact that the vines are dry-farmed. The pinots here are made in mostly 500-liter barrels, about one-third of which are new each year. Bottling takes place on the late side by current California standards. For example, the '97 pinots were racked three times: at the end of the first winter following a December malolactic fermentation, again prior to the '98 harvest, and then a third time before the bottling in April '99. The '97 Goldridge Vineyard Syrah was bottled in December of '99. Dehlinger describes the '97 vintage as "generous in all respects." He declined to show the '98 reds, which were still in barrel. Three-quarters of Dehlinger's production is sold via mailing list.

As at a number of other wineries, Tom Dehlinger has reached a comfortable maximum size level in the 7,000-to-8,000-case range and expects to spend the next several years fine-tuning quality rather than increasing production. Some replanting is going on, with less desirable clones being replaced (Dehlinger is using some Kistler clones now, and reports that he is getting richer wines as a result). But Dehlinger has no plans to expand acreage under vine. According to associate winemaker Eric Sussman, the estate has moved to later picking in recent years: the objective is to get thorough flavor maturity and to avoid green flavors and unripe tannins. These are certainly ripe wines, but I find some of them, especially the pinots, huge to the point of unwieldiness. Although they will never be mistaken for their French counterparts, they are stuffed with fruit and extract. Sussman compares the '97s made here to the Dehlinger '94s, the most graceful recent set of wines from this winery. As was the case throughout the state, crop levels were high, although the pinot vines were thinned to a very reasonable three tons per acre. All of the Dehlinger wines come from the estate vineyards.