2009 Pinot Noir Bien Nacido Vineyard

This is a gorgeous set of wines from Ojai and proprietor Adam Tolmach. The 2009 Pinots and 2008 Syrahs in particular are terrific. The best Ojai wines – and there are many that vie for that label – are gorgeous, transparent to site and highly expressive. As always, the style at Ojai is fairly non-interventionalist. Since 2005, the fermentations have been gentler, with less overall extraction. The malos proceed naturally and slowly. As a rule, the wines are never racked until bottling. The Ojai wines remain exceedingly fairly priced considering the quality and painstaking effort that goes into every bottle.

Adam Tolmach told me that his personal preference for a syrah-drinking program is to "start in when they're about seven or eight years old and the fruit has begun to turn complex, and then for a long time after that." Not enough people have had the chance to experience enough well-aged syrah, he went on, "although plenty of people have a lot of experience with older pinot and cabernet, so they're missing a whole other part of wine, so far." He told me that his customers have been extremely responsive to, and supportive of, the move he made a few years ago to making wines "that emphasize elegance more than sweetness. That doesn't mean that we're making meager wines," he added, "but we do shoot for picking at lower Brix levels than a lot of people. If the pinot is right at 23 degrees Brix, we pick it. Still, you can't have a recipe, because every vintage has its own story. You just need to pick the fruit when it says it's ready."