90 Points “Forward and spicy…”
– Wine & Spirits (April 30, 2012)
90 Points “Vivid red. Blackberry and cherry-cola on the fragrant nose…”
– Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar (July 31, 2011)
“The current offering is dense for the vintage, intense, complex, and pleasure bent…”
– Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate (October 31, 2011)
2009 was a vintage of abundance. Ideal springtime weather led to a hot summer, which gave us a beautiful, uniform and potentially prolific crop. Warm temperatures at harvest time lulled some growers into picking late, at potentially high alcohols. The right decision, top winemakers agree, was to get the grapes in while they still had fresh flavors. As always, we showed our commitment to quality by thinning and green harvesting to achieve earlier ripening and better concentration of flavors. As winemaker, Adam Campbell, states “harvest went off without a hitch and we picked the grapes at a deliberate but frankly leisurely pace which allowed focusing on retained acidity.” So, vintage 2009 may be remembered as one of those rare combinations of excellent quality and quantity, with the wines showing flash.
We planted La Bohème Vineyard in 1985 by selecting the very best vines from our original Estate Pommard plantings. Pat and Joe Campbell named the vineyard after the family who sold them the property – and their favorite Puccini opera. This picturesque vineyard overlooks the winery and the coast range mountains and rises to 800 feet, making it one of the highest elevation vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley. La Bohème was planted using cuttings from vines selected for small cluster size and intense flavors, hallmarks of the world’s finest Pinot Noirs. We prune and cluster-thin La Bohème heavily to limit yields and to maximize ripening and flavor concentration.
All of Elk Cove’s delicate Pinot Noir fruit undergoes the same gentle handling through our gravity flow system. This allows us to achieve the elegance, texture and luscious quality that are the hallmarks of exquisite Pinot Noir.
Fruit from the La Bohème vineyard is fermented in small, temperature controlled steel tanks, hand punched down twice daily then aged for ten months in 50% new French oak. Our winemaking team then selects the very best barrels to represent the silky, lush flavor profile that exemplifies La Bohème pinot noir.
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