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Pinot Noir
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Casa Carneros is a small, very serious (600 case production), quality-oriented producer in the Napa half of the Carneros appellation, with an absolutely beautiful vineyards, planted to the 8 most promising clones of pinot noir. The eight chosen pinot clones in the Casa Carneros vineyard were harvested separately (all the way into October), and vinified separately in small, half-ton bins. Their winemaking is both artisanal (fermentation in small, half-ton bins) and Burgundian (aging in 50% new French oak and 50% one and two year French oak barrels). As winemaker Melissa Moravec (who made the wines at Carneros Creek before starting Casa Carneros with her husband) explains, she very much favors "a small scale approach to winemaking that ultimately produces a rich, complex and extracted Pinot Noir. This is a wine with layers of dense fruit balanced by firm tannins with the structure and velvety texture that is the hallmark of a fine Pinot Noir."
This artisanal, quality approach also leads Casa Carneros to release its wines with some bottle age, as their full quality begins to show. And indeed, it does show both the rich, velvety fruit Moravec describes and the greater complexity and secondary aromas proper age can bestow.
This wine is a superb Carneros pinot noir – with the pure, very recognizable Carneros nose of, say, a Saintsbury pinot, but even greater richness and depth. With its extra bottle age, it’s both very smooth and quite complex.
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