2001 pinot noir

[jeffperez62]

I've been told by some that the 2001 vintage for pinot is worth buying into. So......any opinions?? Can anyone tell me about Rochioli Vineyard?

[Nevan]

In my opinion, the idea of summarizing an entire vintage as "worth" this or that, is a monstrous oversimplification that should not be persued. There are far too many variables in any "vintage for pinot" to make such a sweeping generalization useful (this may be especially true for Pinot noir, but it certainly also applies to other varietals). And I won't even go into the issue of "investing" in wine . . . that is an entirely other subject.

The weather conditions in a given year provide a background to the vintage, but it is the combination of regional mesoclimates, site specific microclimates, vineyard management practices, clonal selections, cellar practices, winemaker skills & style, etc. that produce the actual character in any given bottle. In a so-called "bad' vintage there will be individual sub-regions that experience enough weather variation to make their wines distinctively better than those of another subregions, even though they are from the same vintage ("vintage" here being synonymous for "weather conditions" rather than "growing year"). Likewise, no matter what the character of the "vintage," there will be some producers who make better (or worse) wine than others.

Take 2002 in Oregon as an example. A very long and warm August through October gave us "great" vintage weather, and winemakers had unusual freedom to decide when to pick. So, some would say it is a great pinot vintage to "buy into." But the fact is, the quality of wine in this vintage especially, is more determined by the decisions the winemakers made. Warmer sites produduced very rapid ripening, and some winemakers chose to pick too fast, resulting in high alcohol cocktail wines that lost a lot of character . . . even in a "great" vintage. Higher altitude sites ripened more slowly, and many of those wines show more structure. Sites with young vines produced very different pinots than sites with old vines . . . so which are the best to "buy into"?

It was worse in 2001. Some rain during harvest caused some producers to pick too early, resulting in thinner wines than other producers who chose to wait it out (I remember Ken Wright showing me--in the rain--his "concentrator" where water was being removed from the juice). But since the rains were no where near what they used to be (pre-1998), it is a vintage that was still characterized as extremely good . . . though there are some definitely less than "extremely good" wines.

In California, where vintage variation is less, there is still wide variation in the quality of pinots from any given vintage. Even so, folks like Roochiolli (among many others) have proven skilled at making superb wines pretty much all the time . . . so the quality of the vintage is less of a factor than the quality of the producer.

So, to end this minor rant, if you really want to "invest" in Pinot noir, I'd suggest following the producer (and your own taste of the wines), not the reputation of the vintage. But then, I wouldn't recommend wine as an investmenbt in the first place!