winegeist

Believing that a Ken Wright Pinot Noir Savoya Vineyard ’06 would stand up to a cheese plate, a .375L bottle was opened, decanted, and allowed to breathe. Wright bottles 10 distinctly different single vineyard Pinot Noirs and, as of the ’09 vintage, one regional blend under his eponymous label. Even after a short breath the ’06 Savoya seems much more mature and integrated than a recent ’05 of the same make and model, though splits do tend to age faster. The nose is still largely muted and not the sonorous experience that was the ’97 Carter, but the initial waft is a somewhat hollow richness that promises great things.

A bite-sized split bottle next to a .750L.

That great Beatles recording from 1966 got me thinking about the lost preciousness of The Bootleg. There was a time when one could only acquire a rare live recording from a shop like Revolver Records (R.I.P.) on W. 8th St. or from another music nerd who, for the cost of a Maxell XLII blank tape (later CD) and shipping, would make and post you a physical copy, and it wasn’t that long ago. Or at least it wasn’t that long ago before we began staring directly down the barrel of the Singularity. The speed and quantity of information afforded to anyone with a decent wireless signal at this point is astonishing and it has rendered the term “rare recording” comically obsolete. Even if there’s only one, it’s out there.

But back to Ken Wright Pinot Noir Savoya Vineyard 2006. It shows damp earth, without a hint of swampiness, and black raspberry. This wine needs another couple of years in the bottle to properly develop (and will live for another decade), but the acidity is mouth-watering and the back end spice smacks pleasurably of pink peppercorn. After a couple of hours in the decanter soft vanillin and subtle trace minerals become apparent. The ’06 Ken Wright Pinot Noir Savoya is quite beautiful and largely integrated, though so many flavors and aromatics are yet to emerge.