2009 Pinot Noir Arroyo Grande Valley

The long, cool 2010 growing season helped to produce fruit that Brian Talley said perfectly suited his family estate's wine philosophy. He called it "a Talley vintage" in the sense that it was possible to make concentrated wines with depth of flavor but also balance and tension, the style he favors. As for 2009, a moderate growing season was followed by a hot, late summer and an early September heat spike that pushed ripening up quickly but not excessively. "The fruit was clean and there was a good amount of it, which is nice because we got set back a lot with 2010's short crop, like everybody." The Talley wines age remarkably well, by the way, as I've learned from drinking wines from my own cellar. I was also able to taste a fairly extensive vertical of chardonnays and pinots recently that went back to the 1980s and it further confirmed these wines' ability not only to endure, but to evolve and improve with age.