2011 Zinfandel Papera Ranch

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.

Proprietor Mike Officer arrived with a bevy of wines for our tasting, all of which I was thrilled to sample. Readers who don't think terroir exists in California should check out the Carlisle Zinfandels and Syrahs, many of which emerge from old-vine, heritage sites that nearly disappeared until Officer and some of his peers rescued them from the brink of oblivion. In particular, the 2011 Zinfandels are fabulous. Officer describes 2011 as a very late harvest. The Syrahs were all picked after the rains, while the thinner-skinned Zinfandels naturally came in quite a bit earlier. Officer told me he performed a severe selection of fruit that took with it a full 50% of the production. For his efforts, Officer has been rewarded with a set of gorgeous wines, although I imagine his faithful clientele won't be too thrilled with the lower production levels of these wines, given their already minuscule production. Unfortunately, 2011 Compagni Portis and Gruner Veltliner were to be bottled right after this tasting, so I will have to wait until another opportunity to sample those wines. Carlisle is resolute in keeping his wines affordable, a commendable approach I wish were more common throughout California.

Mike Officer's recent purchase of the Mueller winery facility and surrounding property just outside Windsor has set him up to expand production to 10,000 cases from his current 9,000, but the move is "really about getting the space and flexibility to do whatever we want, whenever we want, which just wasn't possible in the current situation." Officer has been making his wines at Punchdown Cellars (formerly known as Copain Custom Crush) in Santa Rosa since 1998, when his production was 650 cases, and these 2011 wines are his swan song there. Officer summed up the 2011 vintage, as he saw it, in three words: "focus, delineation and texture." "Disastrous" flowering and non-stop selection in the vineyard meant that production was off by about 25% here but on the bright side "those grapes that made it through were able to ripen slowly and steadily" as there were no dangerous heat spikes that could cause sugars to run wild, which can easily happen in many of the warmer sites where Officer works.