2011 Pinot Noir Le Caprice

I have been tasting and drinking the Peter Michael wines since the mid-1990s, when I sold them heavily in one of Boston's top restaurants. These current releases from brothers Nick and Luc Morlet are mostly solid across the board, although the wines showed better from barrel than bottle. There is no question the 2011 vintage was brutally difficult at Peter Michael, as it was pretty much everywhere in northern California. My overall impression from tasting these wines is that they were made with the goal of expressing the Peter Michael house style more than the vintage. As a result, some of these wines appear a bit forced. This is especially true of the 2011 Chardonnays, none of which are as impressive from bottle as they were from barrel. Unfortunately I was not able to taste the 2012s or the 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon-based reds, including the new Cabernet Sauvignon from the former Showket Vineyard in Oakville, but I will report on those wines as soon as I have a chance.

The last two years haven't been especially kind to Peter Michael and the winemaking team led by Nick Morlet. Production was down 30-40% across the board in both 2010 and 2011. Morlet describes 2011 as a difficult growing season, starting with a late bud break and bloom. Morlet told me every ensuing decision was critical, in particular the timing of green harvests leading up to harvest. Overall, though, the 2011s are quite beautiful. The estate chose not to bottle their top two Chardonnay selections, the Cuvee Indigene and Point Rouge, which strengthened the rest of the wines. Morlet also opted to use less new oak on the 2011 Chardonnays because of the lower concentration of the fruit relative to more typical years. The 2010 Chardonnays have much of the weight I saw in the wines last year. The question is whether the 2010s will drop some of that baby fat over the coming years, or if they will always remain a bit on the bombastic side. My guess is it will be the latter, even if the wines are quite striking. According to Morlet, one of the challenges in 2010 was the intense wind during the flowering that resulted in a poor set.

"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.