2013 Proprietary Red

It's full steam ahead at Pahlmeyer, where the team continues to make compelling wines in both Napa Valley and Sonoma. I focused on Napa Valley wines during my most recent visit earlier this fall and will cover the Sonoma wines early next year. The just concluded harvest in Napa Valley was the first in which farming was done entirely in house, which is a big investment, but also quite common among estate that aspire to be at the top. Some of the recent developments here include an increasing reliance of estate fruit. In the cellar, winemaker Kale Anderson is extending barrel aging for the reds, which means some of the 2013s had not been bottled when I saw them. Concurrently, Pahlmeyer is also moving towards larger 500 liter barrels on a number of wines, which he feels allow the wines to retain more freshness as they age. The 2013s are just as strong at they were last year. Anderson describes 2014 as a much earlier year than 2013, with wines that were too long to extract. Sadly, in 2015 yields are off by 35% or so because of poor weather during flowering.

This is a fabulous set of wines from Pahlmeyer. Jayson Pahlmeyer's daughter, Cleo, is now running the show. The 2012s are the first wines Kale Anderson made from start to finish here, and they are superb. As is the case throughout the valley, the 2012s are plump and fruit-driven in style, while the 2013s show a little more acidity along with darker tonalities of fruit. All of these wines are made in a rich, extracted style that typically requires a bit of bottle age for best results.