95+ Points - Wine Advocate
Wine Advocate
April 27, 2018
William Kelley
"Cropped at minuscule yields of 0.63 tons per acre, the 2014 Pinot Noir Selleck Vineyard was my favorite of these single-vineyard Pinot Noirs from Calera. An opaque ruby-black in hue, the wine offers up a rich and complex bouquet of cassis, plums, figs, black truffle and creamy oak. On the palate, it's full-bodied, rich and powerful, structured around a chewy chassis of tannin but possessing good energy and depth. On opening, this vintage of Selleck is almost brutally primary and atypically concentrated, but it becomes considerably more harmonious with extended aeration: while this will demand patience, it should be superb in the fullness of time. If you must try a bottle young, consider decanting."
What a graceful, gorgeously integrated bouquet of raspberry, sandalwood, juicy Marionberry, plum, white pepper and a captivating savory element. The sensuous mouthfeel is juicy and taut all at once; a wonderful juxtaposition and basis for complexity, it’s intimate and flirty with flavors of orange rind, honeysuckle and a whisper of rose petal with a rich long persistent finish.
Wine Notes
Little rainfall in 2014 led us into our third year of a drought. Warm spring temperatures and brilliant sunshine through the summer made for a fantastic growing season, but yields were severely affected by the lack of rainwater. This made for a fast, furious and early harvest. We picked the entire Selleck vineyard on September 14th. Each lot was pressed 14 days after harvest, racked by gravity to French oak barrels, then aged without racking in those barrels, 30% new, for seventeen months. The lots were then combined and the resultant wine was bottled without filtration, as always.
