2023 Pinot Noir The Return

My annual tasting at Littorai is always one of the highlights of the year because the wines encompass so many top vineyards in Sonoma County and Anderson Valley. Explorations of site. That’s what this range is all about.

Cold, foggy weather was a constant in the early part of 2023. Conditions were much more favorable in Anderson Valley, where growing degree days outpaced those of Sonoma through late May. “Between the Sonoma Coast and Anderson Valley, we had the most radically different start to the year as I have ever seen,” Ted Lemon noted. “It was the exact opposite of 2022.”

July saw high temperatures that were problematic in some spots, notably Savoy, where Lemon dropped a significant amount of the crop because of sunburn. Cluster sizing continued throughout August and September, leading to fruit being dropped as late as mid-September. The Pinots were picked starting on September 20 with Mays Canyon and Richardson Ranch. All the other Pinots were harvested in October, with two picks on November 1. For Chardonnay, harvest ran from October 10 to 25, almost a month later than 2022. The Pinots were vinified with a fair proportion of whole clusters. I tasted all the 2023s from tank, except for the Charles Heintz Chardonnay (which was still fermenting). Lemon opted to bottle a handful of Pinots early because of their softness. Those wines are reviewed from bottle.

There aren’t a lot of surprises with the bottled 2022s. The whites are soft and open-knit, as they were last year, while the Pinots are every bit as exciting as they were when I tasted them from barrel. Stem inclusion is in the 20% range for most Pinots, a bit less than in 2023. Stylistically, the 2022 are quite supple, while the 2023s are more delineated.