Like the flagship estate Pinot Noir from Foursight Wines, this wine is heady with flowers and fruits, but it also feels more exotic, and curiously both darker and more spectral.
It’s a clonal bottling of Pommard 05, a Pinot cultivar characterized by black fruits and spice. The grapes were hand-harvested from the estate Charles Vineyard, then fermented with ambient cultures and 20 percent whole clusters. The wine was aged in French oak, 60 percent new, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. It was also back-labeled, as all Foursight Wines are, with its ingredients: grapes, tartaric acid, and sulfur dioxide.
The robe is pale red with a faint cloudiness, and the perfume is almost tropical in its rich florality, redolent of rose hips, purple flowers, passion fruit, and guava. But the palate darkens, stained with concentrated, rubescent fruits like dried cherry, dried strawberry, and sundried tomato. Tints of barrel spice add shade.
A wine this ornate makes a ruminative aperitif, but it’s also delicious with lighter meats and game. Stand it up for an hour before gently decanting it off its sediment, then try it with roasted chicken, pork loin, or rare beef rubbed with seasonings like anise, juniper berry, black pepper, and thyme. It’s also great with aged cheeses and the blues.
2015 Foursight Wines Pinot Noir Clone 05 Charles Vineyard Anderson Valley
14.4% abv | $52 (sample) 125 cases made
Foursight Wines
