2009 Pinot Gris Trenton Station Vineyard Russian River Valley

Rod Berglund is another grower/winemaker who told me that as seductive as the 2012s can be, the 2011s probably intrigue him more because "there's a freshness, a balance and a restraint to them that's just so classically pinot."With that in mind he thinks that the best 2011s will outrun their younger siblings, even if they're not exactly showing much of their potential just yet.He said that he doesn't want to sound like a downer by calling the 2012s "obvious" but compared to '11 and '10 "they're so much more approachable and easy to love."They'll likely be that way throughout their evolution, he believes, thus enjoyable at every stage of their lives, "which isn't true for '11 and 10."

Rod Berglund wanted to emphasize to me the importance he places on holding back wines from release "until they've started to give at least a little glimpse of what's under the baby fat." Berglund, who has been making wine at Swan for 21 years now, has a formidable stash of older Swan wines (not to mention an array of bottles from around the world) at his disposal to make his point that "people are way too hasty passing judgment on a new wine that's not meant to be itself until it's 5, or 10, or even 20 years old." Berglund told me that the 2009 harvest "was incredibly long, starting on September 3rd and winding up on November 13th, which is pretty remarkable."