2018 Extravagant Pinot Noir

Our Rare ONE-BARREL Release

 TRIPTYCH OF MONOCLONE® PINOT NOIRS

From the Phenomenal 2018 Vintage

 Single Vineyard, Single Clone, ONE barrel…Soliste

Claude and I sat together the other day to taste three of our 2018 Single Barrel MonoClone Pinot Noirs and select one to release. As our story goes, the name Soliste comes from the special single barrel the Burgundian vigneron reserves for friends and family. Our single barrel wines represent the promise and journey that is Soliste. We wanted to select an outstanding single barrel wine from an exceptional vintage to share with you. 

Each of these three wines epitomized why we love Pinot Noir. Of all the cépages, it is the most complex, exotic, cerebral, and enigmatic. And at times, perhaps showing its French roots, can be very frustrating and challenging. This is why we are both infatuated with and passionate about Pinot Noir, and why we care so deeply about our mission to craft the very best wines year after year. Selecting just one took much debate – and more than a glass or two. Suddenly, Claude announced, “These are so incroyable, instead of waiting and releasing them one at a time, let's showcase them together, and at once!” Sometimes the best decision is no decision at all. 

I’ll turn it over to Claude for his tasting notes:

This stellar vintage captures all the Alchemy that becomes Great Pinot Noir. This is a vintage for the purist. 2018 has gifted us precision, depth, pure aromatics, and length to craft and select ONE barrel of three distinctive and singular Pinots from specific sites, terroir, and MonoClone. Each is aged for 16 months in a single barrel. The rewards are Pinot Noir’s intoxicating nose, powerful yet refined with layers of pure fruit density, spice, sous-bois, truffles, amazing length, and complex finish.  

These three One Barrel MonoClone wines are so uniquely different that we simply could not resist but to do ONE release for you to experience their individual character – Vive la différence! 

2018 EXTRAGAVANT MonoClone Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast - The Aristocrate

Mysterious amethyst and garnet depth and luminosity showing concentration and structure, long legs denoting texture, very pure. The intoxicating bouquet is deep, sappy ( redwood pine needles), and earthy; offering up notes of black cherries, blackberries, grilled meats, bitter chocolate, a brilliant base of soil tones, nutty, vanilla fat, and a potpourri of exotic spice tones in the upper register. As the wine evolves in the glass or decanter, the aromatics become voluptuous and sweeter with raspberry liquor aromatics, spiked with star anise and cardamom. Superbly elegant and powerful, the back nose has layers of sous-bois (forest floor), mushrooms, and violets. On the front palate, the overall impression is of a totally spherical wine that has no beginning and no end. This a wine of great nobility. The wine coats your mouth with impressive weight; compote of red and blue fruits accented with bitter caramel, violets, and herbal tones. This is a pinot for the purist that will discover a wine that hits all the high notes yet is unctuous and silky. The mid-palate reveals the wine’s broad shoulders and floral character which elevate the texture of the tannins creating a perfect harmony between the density of the fruit and subtle sous bois and mineral undertone creating an autumnal backbone. The palate is tensile, intense, focused, and underpinned by filigree tannins that lend it magnificent sophistication. With the explosively long and very firmly structured finish, this densely packed wine spreads out horizontally on the inexorable rising finish, saturating the palate with a fine dusting of tannins and shimmering minerality. An extraordinary wine.  Clos de Beze West…