Valeta and I spare no personal effort or expense in our quest to make the best Pinot Noir in the New World. We make approximately 100 cases of wine yearly from Clos de la Tech’s first vineyard that surrounds our home in Woodside, California. It is named Domaine du Docteur Rodgers* in honor of Docteur Barolet, the French M.D., who, from the 1930s through the 1960s, made what many collectors consider to be the finest Burgundies ever at his “Domaine du Docteur Barolet” properties. Barolet wines are generally unavailable, but sell for about $1,000 per bottle at auction when they come to market.

* Named in honor of Dr. Barolet, the French M.D., who made what many collectors consider to be the finest Burgundies ever in the 1930s through the 1950s at his “Domaine du Docteur Barolet” properties. Barolet wines are generally unavailable, but sell for about $1,000 per bottle at auction when they come to market.

Our first vintage at Clos de la Tech, the 1996, was good, but only a lucky accident enjoyed by rookies. Pinot Noir is the most difficult grape to vinify successfully year after year. After two “cycles of learning” (a.k.a. failures) in 1997 and 1998 and a “jury’s out” year in 1999, we produced what we consider to be world-class Pinot Noirs from 2000 through 2007. The 2000 was the first of these vintages to be ready for commercial release in 2005. It featured a classic Pinot Noir floral perfume bouquet, along with the aromas of spices and red berries, as well as the silky-smooth body that is characteristic of great Burgundies. Relative to the 2000, the 2001 bouquet is similar but more intense, the wine is bigger and fruitier but still features silky tannins.

As Pinot Noir grapes ripen, the wine produced from them improves in several ways. Under-ripe tannins are often described as astringent and thin. “Thin” means that the tannins do not provide any mouth-filling body, while “astringent” means that at the same time the body is lacking, the tannins pucker the mouth unpleasantly, giving a dry, squeaky sensation as the tongue moves over the palate—because the astringent tannins chemically react with the proteins in our saliva, destroying its lubricating property, causing us to literally feel the bumps on our tongue. Astringency is therefore a feeling, not a taste. A small amount of astringency is present in almost all red wines, giving them “grip,” as British Master of Wine Clive Coates puts it, but Pinot Noir should never be as astringent as a typical California Cabernet.

During the ripening at Clos de la Tech, our Pinot Noir tannin improves in stages from astringent to bitter, then to “round” and finally “sweet,” as we have learned by making wines from early- and late-harvested grapes. A very subtle bitter aftertaste adds to Pinot Noir quality but wines with a high concentration of bitter tannins are unpleasant. As the grapes ripen further to produce “round” tannins, the wine takes on a mouth-filling property without much accompanying bitterness and almost no astringency. Finally, the late-harvest tannin gets “sweet,” a very pleasant sensation produced by the tannin in the best Burgundies that not only fills the mouth, but also leaves a non-sugar, slightly sweet sensation in the aftertaste. I aggregated these words from Clive Coates’ reviews of four of the very best Burgundies of the 2002 vintage: “very ripe and rich;” “full bodied, firm, rich;” “fat, firm, rich;” and “ripe, almost sweet on the palate.” The progression of tannin ripeness at the Domaine du Docteur Rodgers vineyard (this phenomenon is vineyard-specific) is depicted in the figure above. The ripening progression of the fruit flavors and the bouquet is also given.

California’s long ripening season—we enjoy a long “hang time,” as California vintners say—improves not only the tannin quality, but also the quality of the fruit flavor in the grapes. As our Pinot Noir grapes ripen, the intensity of its fruit flavor increases and its flavor changes in this progression: melon to strawberry, then cherry, followed by red fruit (raspberry, currant), black fruit (again, raspberry and currant)—and finally a raisin flavor, as the grapes shrivel, like the ones used to make the Amarone wines of Northern Italy.

Pinot Noir’s bouquet also gets both more intense and more unique (less grape-like) as the grapes get riper. Along with those silky tannins, it is the unique bouquet of Pinot Noir—a complex floral perfume that is as far from “grapey” as a smell can get—that causes Pinot Noir to be our sole passion in winemaking.

The tannin, fruit and bouquet of the 2001 Domaine du Docteur Rodgers are characterized graphically below.

So, we describe the 2001 offering as having dark color, a medium-plus body with sweet tannins, and a complex bouquet—in which, in addition to the red fruit, we smell “cloves” and “spices,” which come partly from eugenol (also found in oil of clove), a natural by-product of Pinot Noir fermentation. The bouquet also has the floral perfume characteristic we love in Pinot Noir, which probably has numerous components, only a few of which have been definitively identified in the literature. There is also a faint vanilla smell in the background that comes from vanillin, a by-product of oak barrel toasting.

Because Domaine du Docteur Rodgers produced only 110 cases in 2001, we are able to allocate only a few bottles each to the customers on our mailing list. Your personal allocation is noted on your enclosed order form. If you want to place an order, you can fax or mail the order form to us. You may also request an increase in your allocation, which we will try to honor on future releases.

Appendix A: NATIVE YEAST FERMENTATION