2012 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir

2012 was a return to a normal growing season for most of coastal California, and the Santa Lucia Highlands had its first large crop since 2006.  The spring and summer weather was warm with no significant cold spells nor rain events at crucial flowering and set times, so an above average amount of Pinot hung on the vines.  There was extensive crop thinning post veraison at all four of the sites that make up our 2012 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, and perfect, cool fall weather produced an evenly ripe vintage.

 

We harvested Pinot Noir from Rosella's, Sierra Mar, Soberanes and the Peterson Vineyard for our 2012 SLH Pinot.  The clones that make up the wine are Pisoni, 667, 113, Swan, 23, 777 and 115.  We used a large percentage of whole cluster fermentation in 2012, particularly in the Sierra Mar clone 23 and the Rosella's clone 113.

 

Given the ripe nature of the fruit in 2012, we expect our 2012 SLH Pinot to drink well a little earlier than our past several releases, dating back to 2008 for the SLH appellation blend.  But there is plenty of tannin and depth for many years of development, so an ideal drinking window would be from 2014 to 2022.

Wine Profile

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