Since the completion of the local harvest last year, I’ve been hearing whispers that the 2009 vintage has the potential to be one of best ever.  Mother nature was fully cooperative, offering up very warm day time temperatures, even at the vineyard elevation (often 4500-5000 feet) but sufficiently cooled nights.  Rainfall was well below the norm, essentially eliminating moisture related disease, and allowing the vintners to tailor irrigation to their specifications.  The only fly in the ointment was a late season hail storm or two in the Sonoita region which may have reduced a crop a little.  So with the grapes in the barrels and tanks and a few whites actually ready for bottling, I was curious to discover how the wines are developing.  For some answers, I spoke with Kent Callaghan (www.callaghanvineyards.com)  and Sam Pillsbury (www.pillsburywine.com)  about the wine’s progress and had the opportunity to taste some barrel samples from Kent as well.  The result……….so far so good, perhaps even excellent.

My wife, Rosalee, and I headed down to Kent’s vineyard last weekend to taste samples from twelve barrels.  I’ll detail these in the next column but suffice it to say that there was not an overly tannic, brut wine in the bunch.  I was suitably impressed that most of the wines have already developed a distinct personality and identity that range from light and delightful with defining acidity to the more structured and muscular.  Kent shared with us that while he used to believe it was imperative to extract from the grape skins until there was no more, he has shifted his approach, balancing the fruit, tannins and acidity with greater precision.  From his samples, I believe that he’s succeeding.  We’ll have a video of our conversation with him as well over the next month so look for that on the Video segment.