2010 Pinot Noir Cerise Vineyard

There is no doubt in my mind Littorai is one of this country's crown jewel wineries. Proprietor Ted Lemon has the magic touch with both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Readers will find a large number of fabulous wines in both 2010 and 2011. Simply put, this is a superb set of new and upcoming releases from a California icon. The 2010s are a product of a generally cold year marked by significant disease pressure during the middle of the growing season and two significant heat spikes that followed in late August and September. Ted Lemon told me the Chardonnay was more affected by sunburn than the Pinot, and required considerable sorting. The vintage was not without its challenges for the Pinot, however, as the One Acre and Platt were declassified to the Les Larmes and Sonoma Coast bottlings respectively, neither of which I tasted. The harvest was a little late for the Pinot, but very late for the Chardonnay.

Two thousand ten featured the second coolest July in 50 years in Santa Rosa, said Ted Lemon, and summer didn't really arrive until the end of August. "There was a lot of mildew and botrytis pressure, the mornings were foggy well into August, and many growers de-leafed their vines. So a lot of people really got burned by the late August heat spike. Zinfandel was very sensitive to the extreme heat after the cooler summer, and chardonnay was also hit. Our pinots were less affected." Lemon harvested his chardonnay vines between October 11 and 21, after a week of painstakingly removing berries affected by both botrytis and sunburn. The 2010s here--chardonnays and pinots--were aged in about 25% new oak. As is normally the case, I tasted these wines just a few weeks after they had been bottled.