Six from last Friday night's blind neighborhood tasting, for which the subject "Santa Barbara pinots" was chosen before I (who buys the wines) realized the paucity of them in the state system. It was too hot to ship any wine up from California, so I had to make do with the following.
2007 Au Bon Climat 'La Bages au Dessus', Santa Maria: Bright red, spicy red fruit and flowers on the nose with a sweeter finish than the others. Interesting but not life-changing. $35
2006 Siduri Santa Lucia Highlands: Pale red, no primary fruit left, a drink-now wine who's 'now' is over. However, where that wouldn't reccomend anybody go buy this, the fading secondary development did make the wine stand out in the crowd rather like a cream soda would in a flight of root beers, and so it ranked #3 with the group. Fun, funky and loamy. $26
2009 Morgan Double L Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands: Dark purple with aromas of blackberry and plum. The spiciest wine on the table and the darkest and most tannic, plus absent any of the tomato-fruit flavors the other five tended to have. Reminded me a lot of the Wes Hagen/Loring/Siduri wines I've had from Wes Hagen's Clos Pepe Vineyard. My WOTN, group last. $43
2008 Claiborne and Churchill, Edna Valley: Cherry, rhubarb, red licorice, minerals. All good flavors that failed to get the support they needed from acidity. Too soft, and my last place. $23
2008 Sanford Winery, Sanford and Benedict Vineyard, Santa Rita Hills: Bright red, loaded with assertive cherry and pomegranate fruit with a sage-y, wild prairie kind of aspect to it. Drinks perfectly upon pulling the cork without devloping much new in the glass, worried me, and though very elegant and attractive (and #1 with the group), I didn't taste the long-range potential to justify the price ($45) and would instead spend my sheckles on three bottles of the next guy. Which was:
2009 Talbott Logan 'Sleepy Hollow Vineyard', Santa Lucia Highlands: I was proud of this one. I picked up a bottle at Costco to sample a few weeks ago and immediately bought more for the tasting. I thought it exceptional for the price and knew it would be popular for all the right reasons; it's strong second place showing confirmed all that. Complex and well balanced between fruit and savory with cherry, tomato, smoke, tomato leaf, earth and black pepper all evolve beautifully in the glass, but it definitely needs air. And it has the 5-8 year potential that the Sanford above lacked.
And two others from last week:
2007 Ken Wright 'Guadalupe Vineyard': Okay, so if the 2004 KW Nysa Vy a few weeks ago made me suspect that Ken and I aren't meant to be together, this bottle confirmed it handily. It had the same problems: everything about it was round. No angles--even awkward ones would be appreciated--but everything that I find attractive about pinot noir in general and Oregon pinot noir specifically had it's edges. So there's black plum, violets and celery going on here but it's all muted. The uniqueness of it's character seems to stem from it's not having any. Comparing it to other producers and my expectations, it's like coffee with milk vs. black coffee. And I like black coffee.
2003 Arcadian Santa Maria: Pulled from the cellar on a lark to serve to late-night guests who stayed on for one more delightful bottle of something. A lighter wine like pinot noir attracted, but so did something aged and European. An Arcadian fit the ticket perfectly, but I didn't prep it and it needed decanting/filtering. I served the brighter, clearer glasses to my guests and kept the cloudy dreggy bits for myself, but even at that slight disadvantage I enjoyed this more than any of the wines above. It's California origins, Burgundian aspirations and all around class were quite apparent: sweet spicy cherry fruit with a lovely herbaceous underlayment, rich but not cloying, and a tangy, bright, long finish. The wine's at peak but should hold here for up to two more years.