Any concerns I was acquiring about the aging potential of Maysara wines were mollified by my encounter with a 2005 Pinot Noir Delara of compelling complexity and harmonious evolution. Sachet-like scents of dried herbs and faded flowers mingle with black tea and plum distillate. Possessed of ample primary fresh plum and berry juiciness, and of quite polished tannins, this picks up enriching nut oil undertones en route to a long finish. Catnip-like herbal pungency, tart-edged dark fruit skin, and a tactile sense of crushed stone serve to invigorate and intrigue. I imagine this will be best savored over the next couple of years.
In 1998, on a huge, hilly, windswept and abandoned wheat farm south of McMinnville, Mo Momtazi – an engineer who had fled his native Iran for the U.S. in the early ‘80s – began planting and biodynamically farming Pinot Noir. His fruit – a portion of it from the beginning estate-bottled – quickly attracted a certain reputation for incipiently complex flavor intensity, even if here was a place – at least, in the vineyard’s upper elevations – where Pinot would struggle to ripen. Fortunately, over large parts of Momtazi Vineyard’s surface the heat-retention of basalt rock and veins of silica moderates the characteristically very cool evening air temperatures. I had already sensed from tasting several Momtazi wines a other addresses that this is fruit with a special appeal for the most serious not to say fanatical of vintners, and the number of people purchasing these grapes is diminishing by intention because, as Momtazi put it, “If I am going to go broke growing Pinot, I might as well stay home and be broke.” Momtazi’s daughter Tahmiene took over the cellar in 2007. Her two sisters are also involved with the family winery. Pinot is always destemmed; fermentative extraction is by means of pigeage, pump-over and pulsed-air, but regardless of method, sparing; and the young wines go to barrel at dryness without any settling. Another distinctive aspect of Maysara elevage is that some of these young Pinots I tasted had been racked twice, presumably on account of the reduction that can be courted by going to barrel “dirty.” I must say I came away from my first tasting with the Momtazis not at all clear as to the principles that determine and are taken to justify so many different estate Pinots. Moreover – as even a superficial review of my ratings makes clear – I had difficulty making sense of this estate’s pricing hierarchy in terms of wine quality, since ostensibly lesser cuvees can be as complex and better balanced than some that are expensive.
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