Representing a12.9% alcohol blend from multiple sites, predominantly Stermer and Saffron Fields (both in Yamhill-Carlton), McDonald’s 2011 Pinot Noir E delivers tart-edged cherry wreathed in bittersweet, iris-like floral perfume on a polished, generously juicy palate, deploying fine tannins and a musky bite of rose radish in an ingratiatingly long and invigorating finish mouthwateringly underlain by multi-boned, marrow-rich veal stock. I suspect this will perform admirably through 2020. (While his “I” cuvee leans heavily on fruit from cool, high-latitude Wind Hill, this “E” also includes a bit of fruit from that site.)
Jay McDonald – for much more about whose background, fruit sources, and methodology, consult my Issue 202 report – favors a fermentative regimen of gentle pump-overs and minimal, strictly early punch-downs, but notes, “I had no issues in 2011 with color or extraction – though I did less.” He claims to have chaptalized only his fruit from Wind Hill, and that this was a first-ever for him. McDonald was one of the few vintners to show me measures of tartaric and malic acid in his wines, and I was interested to see that – just as my palate suggested – levels of the former were routinely considerably higher than those of the latter (and a bit higher proportionally than they had been in 2010). “I had a huge pH swing in 2010,” he notes – echoing comments made by other vintners with whom I spoke – “but not in 2011.” McDonald half-filled with Chardonnay must each of the half-dozen new barriques he purchased for this vintage, so that by the time he was ready to put Pinot into any of them they’d been somewhat seasoned (and the Chardonnay removed to tank and older barrels). Since the 2010 vintage, incidentally, all of the EIEIO wines other than the rose have fermented spontaneously.
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