2012 Two Acres

Mike Officer concluded his 15-year residency at Santa Rosa's Punchdown Cellars (formerly and sometimes still known as Copain Custom Crush to old-timers like him) following the massively productive 2012 vintage and has moved Carlisle into the former Mueller Winery in Windsor. From a start in 1998 with production of 650 cases, Officer is now flirting with the 10,000-case mark, and everything is sold out, with a waiting list that continues to grow. I tasted the 2012s with Officer at the new winery; compared to the hustle and controlled chaos at Punchdown, his new digs, which lie well off a very quiet, mostly residential road, exude a monastic calm. That suits Officer just fine because "the demands of producing as much as many wines (25 in 2012) as we do now makes distractions even more distracting." Two thousand twelve "has the potential to make epic wines if yields were controlled,: he told me, "because the fruit, the stems, everything was pristine, like a dream," a situation that repeated itself in 2013, "which is like another dream: two years in a row with high quantity and high quality? C'mon."

I tasted a stunning range of wines during my recent visit to Carlisle. Proprietor Mike Officer and his winemaker/viticulturist Jay Maddox have recently moved into a new, barn-like winery in Windsor stacked to the ceiling with barrels. Carlisle specializes in old-vine Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Syrahs, most of which come from old-vine, heritage sites planted by Italian immigrants going back to the late 1800s. As great as the Carlisle wines are, Officer's dedication to protecting California's heritage vineyards, a passion he shares with Morgan Peterson of Bedrock, Tegan Passalacqua of Turley and a handful of other growers, may prove to be an even longer lasting legacy. The 2011s have largely turned out as good or better than I expected. Mike Officer believes the 2011s will age well, as the acids are much higher than normal. In my view, a number of the wines, especially those with medium-bodied structures should be drunk over the next handful of years. The 2012s are much more open and radiant in keeping with the style of the year. Best of all, though, these wines deliver superb quality at exceedingly fair prices. The only 2012 I was not able to taste was the Dry Creek Zinfandel, as my sample got lost in transit between the two Carlisle facilities.