2010 L'Esprit de Pavots Red Wine Knights Valley

"It was a small crop that we made even smaller" Nic Morlet told me when describing 2011 here."The green harvesting seemed like it was non-stop and we brought most of the vines down to a single cluster per shoot," he added.Ultimate production was off by a full third, he said, and the decision was made not to make the winery's top-drawer Indigene and Point Rouge chardonnays "and to preserve the best fruit for the other bottlings."Nic calls 2011 "exceptional for pinot noir on the coast [where their estate vineyards lie], with healthy alcohol levels between 13.9 and 14.3 degrees, but there's just not much wine."He also told me that he has been moving to more thin-staved barrels for the cabernet-based wines here, because he believes these barrels give a smoother integration of oak during elevage and, ultimately, finer tannins in the final wine.