2015 L'Espérance Pinot Noir

L’Enfant Prodigue of Soliste

In 2005, we made our first Pinot Noir from the family vineyard (only 143 cases produced, that’s it!) located in a unique site that we believed would grant us the ability to craft wines with a style that would satisfy our infatuation for the great Burgundies that we love. In 2006, L’Espérance was born out of this vineyard focusing on a clone that would reflect a wine of great aromatics and purity. In 2009, from the same site, we challenged ourselves to make L’Espérance from that single vineyard, a single clone, and allocate a single cooperage barrel house in France to deliver uncompromised focus to the wine. The MonoClone® was born and we registered the trademark to protect our beliefs.

Having said that, we did not become stubborn about the MonoClone or infatuated by the idea, the wines had to deliver. If they did not, we would have gone back to blending the clones. Our MonoClone focus has produced compelling wines, and so here we are, almost a decade later enjoying unique, compelling wines – all so different but sharing the same commitment to elegance, length, and complexity. Vive la différence!

2015 had a moderate winter resulting in an earlier start to the vintage. We enjoyed a cool spring and a modest fruit set. Overall it was a temperate, gentle growing season that helped to nurture complexity, length, and concentration along with quality and consistency both in and among our vineyards. While the persistent drought was concerning in some areas, our cool, coastal sites, fortunately, remained largely unaffected.

2015 L’Espérance MonoClone Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast

Tasting Notes 

Le Regard / The Look
Pure and crystalline robe, Ruby with mineral density, extreme clarity.

Le Nez / The Nose
Generous bouquet of raspberry, briary, wild strawberry, undergrowth, and blood orange scents, with a tail of dry herbal and mineral notes, all very complex and beautifully defined.

Degustation / The Taste
The front palate has great tension – stately, regal, with filigree tannin and a beguiling sense of symmetry.  A gracious focus on tangy red cherries, dried raspberries layered with violets, dried herbs and orange rind. The texture has great lift and bides its time in the mouth before fanning out and revealing an exotic complexity of spices. This is very old-world Burgundy in structure, reminiscent of the wines of Hubert de Montille and Huber Lignier. As the wine develop with time, the sappy red fruit become more intense, compote of raspberry, sour cherries and cranberry spiked with black pepper and dry thyme vanilla and wooded tones. The well structure wood tannins are subtle and give way to an unobstructed vibrant underlying acidity that create a vivacious long finish. This wine will benefit of decanting at least one hour before to reveal its full personality.

L’ESPÉRANCE 2015…Clos de la Roche West