Spring Release MacIntyre Estate Vineyard Pinot Noir
2020

Winemaker’s Notes

Our MacIntyre Estate is the most exciting young vineyard I’ve ever farmed and everyone at DuMOL is incredibly excited for its future. This inaugural release of Pinot Noir is an appropriately great start from an early, dry vintage that drew out the best these young vines could produce.

This cool, lower elevation site benefits from deep, consistent fog intrusion—it's where the fog arrives first each evening and lingers the longest the following morning. It’s a breezy, hillside site, quite steep, east-facing, and planted high-density to our favorite carefully selected heritage plant material. I consider it the best-of-the-best for the region. The sandy soils limit vine vigor to concentrate vine energy on ripening tiny thick-skinned Pinot berries. You can sense this natural concentration in this first bottling—deep, silky, vivid, and inviting but with beautiful coastal lift and freshness. That’s the beauty of farming Pinot “out west.”

Great lilting aromatic complexity: red to black fruits, wildflowers, a woodsy, savory edge, then slate and mineral freshness with fragrant anise. There’s an immediate drive to the palate—crunchy wild berries, spiced plum, classic black cherry. The mid-palate is lacy and silky, then seamless gravelly tannins and pinpoint acidity lift and extend the finish. Rising perfume features dried flowers. You can open and enjoy this wine on release for all its youthful exuberance, but it will develop greater complexity in bottle for ten years. Serve at 60°F and drink between 2022 and 2032.

Andy Smith