Patricia Green Olenik Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009

This is our first return to this big appellation since Quail Hill Vineyard was sold after the 2005 vintage. We were poking around for new vineyard sources in 2009 since our older blocks of Croft Vineyard are nearly gone due to phyloxera. This site is just about 3 miles to our east and was originally owned by Rex Hill. The current owner, John Olenik, purchased it four years ago and has done a great job farming it. When I first saw this site in February Patty was away on a marketing trip and I called her and said, “You’ve got to see this.” Despite being quite near to us and having the same type of Sedimentary soil that we have in our vineyard, Olenik Vineyard is strewn (and I mean STREWN) with every size rock and boulder you can imagine where the only rocks in our site are the ¾ minus gravel we bring in to pave our dirt road. Our block is a 1991 planting of Wadensvil on a steep south-southwest pitched slope at about 400 feet elevation. The vineyard is farmed organically and is quite beautiful in every respect.  

As was the case with many of our best wines, this wine was fermented with about 33% whole clusters and we were rewarded with an incredible array of flavors and textures. In contrast to the opulent, bordering on hedonistic qualities that arose in the Dundee Hills based Balcombe Block 1B and Mysterious, the Olenik is an incredibly pure burst of black fruit, minerality, dried herbs and smokiness all of which linger on the small tannin-saturated finish. The mid-palate has a terrific richness that is less opulence and more weight-without-heaviness that gives the wine fantastic sophistication in a very understated manner. While this may not offer the thrills of the 1B or Mysterious it is a testimony to the wonderful interplay that we are finding more and more with the Wadensvil clone of Pinot Noir and Marine Sedimentary soils. Approximately 350 cases will be bottled.