Gang of Pour - Spinning in Zinfinity Again

The 2001 Vintage

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Vintage 2001

ZAP Saturday Tasting
George Heritier's
Tasting Notes

Henry Harris'
Tasting Notes

I polled some of the winemakers and growers as to their impressions of the vintage most widely featured at this year’s ZAP, and most had very positive things to say, leading me to believe that we Zinfanatics have plenty of good things to look forward to over the next few years.

Mike Officer, Carlisle Cellars (bespectacled, to the right, along with Jay Maddox, Carlisle Viticulturist and Co-Winemaker): 2001 kicks ass! No, really, it was a dream vintage. The growing season was very easy; there was not a lot of mildew pressure, so sulfur dusting was at a minimum. It was a very long, protracted harvest, so you could harvest at your leisure, which was very nice. There was no rush to get things out of tanks, there was no threat of rain forcing you to pick before you wanted to. We had an Indian Summer, which we didn’t have in 2000 (one of the first times I can recall not having an Indian Summer) so that really helped the fruit in the Russian River Valley hit ripeness. So with long hang times, especially in the cooler viticultural areas, the wines ended up with tremendous color and concentration, and it looks to be a great vintage.

I asked Mike if he could give us a sneak peak at ’02, and he had this to say: Jay and I just went through all our lots a week ago and I was actually quite surprised. During the harvest, I thought that 2002 was not going to be that great a vintage. The 2001 wines were very flattering to taste right out of tank very early on, they were very precocious. The 2002s weren’t at all like that, but now with time in barrel, we’re beginning to see what they’re showing, and again, there’s tremendous color, there is great ripeness. I think what threw us off was that the acidity in 2002 ran much higher than in 2001, so that acidity was masking a lot of the fruit and the flavor early on in fermentation, but now that everything’s settling down, you’re beginning to see the raw materials there, and it looks quite nice. It’ll be interesting; it’s possible that some wines in 2002 will be better than their ’01 counterparts, but they’re going to be different. One is going to be a very precocious, “come here big boy drink me now” vintage, and the other is going to be one that is a little more structured, a little more tannic perhaps. But it looks good; certainly after ’98 through 2000, anything looks good!

Robert Biale, Robert Biale Vineyards: It’s a winemaker’s dream vintage, somewhat like the ’99; kind of a slam-dunk year. Mild to warm growing season with a long harvest, which extends the flavors, extends the maturation, extends it all. The fruit did not fall on top of each other, so that resulted in nice supple tannin, darker skin extraction and deeper, concentrated fruit. And in some ways a lot like ’99, these are kind of athletic wines, so we’re looking forward to these to age a little longer, not to age forever, but a little longer than the 2000s. So, in general, we’re real, real happy.

Duane Dappan (right), D-Cubed Cellars: Well, I think that 2001 wines in general have a really nice fruit intensity, great length and a nice tannin structure that’s not overpowering, but is balanced in the wines, I think to make them a really ageable vintage, one that you’re going to want to wait for a couple of years and enjoy for a while.

Jeff Gaffner, Saxon Brown Wines: Patience was a virtue; I think it paid off really well. I think a lot of people pulled the trigger too soon and lost patience and they got an artificial ripeness. I think by letting the fruit hang and understanding the physiology, you got a true ripeness. I think we did it, and I think it paid huge dividends.

Bill Nachbaur, Acorn Winery: It was a difficult vintage from a grower’s point of view; we had not much rain in the winter, and then a lot of frost in the spring, hot May, cold summer, but then it turned out great, a really good vintage.

Paul Draper (right), Ridge Vineyards: For us, it was an excellent vintage. One of the things that we noticed with Zinfandel almost immediately was more tannin extraction, so that the wines REALLY have some good structure. The 2000s were lovely, but they were these very rich, open, easy wines; the 2001s have the structure, the acidity to carry that fruit longer, and for us, vineyard by vineyard, is one of the finest vintages in the last, oh, five years.

I’d heard that Draper is particularly excited about the 2002 vintage, so I asked him if he could elaborate upon that: Ah yes, it’s sort of like saying 2001 broke us into this idea of getting structure that’s more like Cabernet than typical Zinfandel, and both Geyserville and Lytton Springs, if not all the single vineyards, again have a structure and a richness of fruit. I look back to vintages like ’73 and ’74 at Geyserville and Lytton Springs that just aged beautifully and are even hanging in there today as exotic, lovely wines, and I think that ’99 Lytton and 2002 Lytton and Geyserville are sort of in that category where somebody has six bottles and lays one or two down, and if they’re young enough and they wait, they’re actually going to be these incredible… exotic is the easiest word, just unusual wines that I think can be some of the most amazing.

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