The 2010 Pinot Noirs: an assessment
“Pinot could be excellent,” I wrote in my vintage diary on Sept. 2, 2010. At that point in the harvest–a crucial one, when a heat wave had just blasted Northern California–everything depended on two things: the weather moderating, allowing the grapes to ripen evenly and not shrivel, and the rain holding off.
In the event, the next several weeks provided some scares, but all was well. I had gone to Santa Barbara during the third week of September and found Pinot vintners there thoroughly unconcerned about the late harvest “because,” I wrote, “it’s not likely they’ll have any rain for months.” The Pinot harvest now started in earnest. I think the overall feeling among winemakers in California that year was best summed up by something Eric Hickey, who makes the wines at Laetitia, told me on Nov. 19: “The Pinot vintage actually looks pretty good considering it all.” He was referring to the merciless ups and downs of the year and, above all, the lateness.
Prognostications concerning vintages before all the grapes are even picked are dicey, especially in California, where we really don’t have disasters, but only shades of disaster. Some pundits who slammed 1989, for example, turned out to be short-sighted. I’ve always maintained that the only way you can finally pronounce on a vintage’s character is to taste a lot of wine from that year, then study your notes and arrive at the appropriate conclusions. That’s good research, but of course it often conflicts with the goal of reporting, which is to be the first one out there with the headline–and the more shocking and controversial, the better.
Well, I’ve now tasted about 110 Pinot Noirs from the 2010 vintage. That’s only a fraction of what I expect eventually to review; I reviewed about 675 Pinots in 2009. Still, 110 is enough to begin looking for trends. What have I found? So far, things are looking good. Not great; my highest scoring Pinot scored only 94 points. After that, three 93s, two 91s, seven 90s, and everything else between 89 all the way down to a miserable 80.
My top scorers came from everyplace: Russian River Valley, Santa Rita Hills, Anderson Valley, Carneros, Sonoma Coast, suggesting that there was a rather uniform quality overall to 2010 California Pinot Noir. Prices for the best Pinots were modest–at least, as modest as top Pinot can get, averaging out around $35-$40. When you think about it, Pinot Noir pricing has remained remarkably constrained compared to the unabashed gouging that top Cabernet houses are imposing on consumers. But then, that’s the law of supply and demand. There are very, very few Pinots that retail for more than $100, such as Williams Selyem’s Estate and Lynmar’s Quail Hill Old Vines, whereas there are dozens of Cabernets, mainly from Napa Valley, that sell for triple digits.
I expect there to be a lot more high scoring 2010 Pinots by the time all is said and done. Wineries hold the best ones back for two years or more, which means that the release of 2010s should start to pick up just about now, extending over the Spring and Summer into Winter, and then into 2013. There’s no reason why 2010 shouldn’t be stellar. It will also give us a glimpse into 2011, which was similar to 2010: chilly, damp and a nail biter until the bitter end.
