1999 Pinot Noir Pisoni Vineyard

The team of Donald Patz and James Hall, who make their wine in the old Honig facility in Rutherford, specialize in chardonnay and pinot noir from vineyards spanning a number of disparate appellations. Production reached 11,000 cases in 1999, about three-quarters of which is chardonnay. Their contracts with growers, says Donald Patz, allow them some degree of viticultural control: in some cases they pay by the acre and are thus able to crop-thin themselves, while in others they pay the growers to drop crop. Hall told me that the '99 chardonnays had a lot of solids, and so he stopped stirring the lees in June following very long alcoholic fermentations and late malolactic fermentations. The wines were lightly fined prior to bottling but not filtered. The pinot noir lees were likewise stirred during the malos, and the wines remained on their lees until the bottling in September.