2017 Pinot Noir La Côte

In less than a decade, Sashi Moorman and Rajat Parr have created a world class estate. The 2017s are superb, while the 2018s are shaping up to be truly epic. One of the recent developments here has been a reduction of time in barrel from about 20 months to 13 or so, plus a few months in steel, which really seems to help the purity of the fruit come through beautifully. The 2017 Pinots were brought in between August 22 and September 4, just as the heat was starting to arrive. In 2018, the vintage yielded small clusters with small berries. All the Pinots here are done with 100% whole clusters, but the 2018s have a bit more stem presence in relative terms because the bunches were so small. These wines are just stellar, that’s all there is to it.