Welcome to Wine of the Week, a new series in which Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley recommends a delicious bottle that you should be drinking right now. Last week, she highlighted an unusual Sauvignon Blanc-Chardonnay blend. Check back for a new installment every Wednesday.
Many high-end wineries produce what’s known as an “entry-level” wine — a bottle that’s lower-priced and usually designed to be drunk a little earlier than their reserve bottlings. California has borrowed the concept from France, where the idea of a “second wine” is common among Bordeaux’s most celebrated estates, and where Burgundy winemakers often proffer a village wine as a counterpart to their pricier, rarer grand crus.
I applaud California wineries that offer an entry-level wine as an accessible gateway to drinkers who might not be able to afford their other products. But there’s always a risk with these wines — by their nature, they can easily become unexciting afterthoughts.
And so it was a delight to rediscover the Hirsch Bohan-Dillon Pinot Noir, at $38 an uncommonly thrilling entry-level wine from one of Sonoma’s most accomplished producers. Hirsch bottles several different Pinot Noirs, most of them $60 and above, from its estate in Cazadero, in the remote ridges of northwestern Sonoma County overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The winery is a study in micro-terroirs: The 72 acres of vines are divided into 60 blocks, each believed to produce a distinct-tasting wine.
The winemaking protocol on the Bohan-Dillon isn’t significantly different from Hirsch’s flagship Pinots, says general manager Jasmine Hirsch, other than the fact that it spends less time aging in oak barrels and in bottle. The other main difference is that it includes some fruit from a neighbor’s vineyard, Hellenthal, unlike the rest of the Hirsch wines which are made entirely from their own biodynamic estate.
Since the Hirsch vines can produce a fairly tannic Pinot, Jasmine Hirsch says they try to funnel the less-tannic lots of wine into the Bohan-Dillon, to make it “charming and quaffable.”
That’s an apt description of the 2018 Bohan-Dillon, which recalls raspberry, pine needles and aniseed, and whose bright, expressive fruit flavors are countered with a pleasant bitterness. Yes, it’s quaffable, but it also passes for a pretty serious wine.
It’s the kind of wine you could serve on Thanksgiving if you’re hosting wine geeks and novices alike: It will impress the geeks, but isn’t so expensive that you’ll be sorry you opened it for your uncle who says he’d really just prefer a beer.
Then again, you may find it so delicious that you’ll want to keep it all to yourself.
The wine is available directly from the Hirsch website, and at Bay Area retailers, including Flatiron Wine & Spirits, K&L Wine & Spirits, San Francisco Wine Trading Co., Solano Cellars, Noe Valley Wine & Spirits, the Jug Shop, Verve Wine, Draeger’s Market (Blackhawk), Diablo Foods and Farmstead Cheeses & Wines (Oakland and Alameda).
Hirsch Vineyards Bohan-Dillon Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2018 ($38, 12.9%)
Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley
"entry" - Google News
November 04, 2020 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/3enwW1n
An ‘entry-level’ Sonoma Pinot Noir that punches way above its weight - San Francisco Chronicle
"entry" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3f5ZAUJ
https://ift.tt/3d6LMHD
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "An ‘entry-level’ Sonoma Pinot Noir that punches way above its weight - San Francisco Chronicle"
Post a Comment