2022 Theopolis Vineyards, Pinot Noir, Cortada Alta Vineyard, Santa Lucía Highlands.
The ripe, luxurious and satiny dark fruited Cortada Alta Pinot from Theodora Lee at Theopolis Vineyards shows off the best qualities of this unique high elevation vineyard and the vintage with a compelling array of smoothly layered Pinot fruits, a light dusting of spice, pretty florals, hints of earth and a subtle toasty oak nuance. Lee’s version, also helped by Pinot maestro Ed Kurtzman, the ex Roar man who has a long relationship with the Santa Lucia Highlands and close ties to this vineyard, delivers a rich bouquet of crushed berries, rose petals and candy caps that leads to a medium/full body on the palate that gives black cherry, raspberry, Summer plum and grilled orange fruits, along with a touch of vanilla, dried herbs, sandalwood, cinnamon and tea spices. This dark ruby/garnet wine is an impressive addition to the Theopolis lineup, who’s most known for their signature estate grown Yorkville Highlands Petite Sirah, and an exciting Pinot to enjoy over the next 3 to 5 years. Typically, these Theopolis Pinots see carefully sorted grapes that are all hand harvested and then gently cold macerated them in small bins with daily hand punch-downs before maturing the wine in mostly used French oak for between 8 and 14 months.
The Cortada Alta Vineyard, planted in 2014, which is one of the most distinct in the region, it’s the highest site in the Santa Lucia Highlands and has already made a name for itself in the form of outstanding wines, like this Theopolis version, as well as those by Mansfield-Dunne, Ed Kurtzman’s own August West label, Wrath, Loring and Testarossa, to name a few. The story of Cortada Alta, the highest vineyard site in the Santa Lucia Highlands, starts in 2009 with the Peterson family finding 300 acres of rugged scrub land that was a dream come true and this property would become one of the most unique in the region with plantings of Calera, Pommard, Swan, 2A, 23, 667, 828, and 943 Pinot clones. Again as mentioned before, Cortada Alta has some pretty steep slopes, with some at a 44% grade, at close to or above 1,500 feet up, and it’s set on the SLH’s sandy loams with clay and decomposed granite. This site gets a constant cold blast of sea air and loads of sun, making for intense conditions and lots of fruit density, while still enjoying natural acidity, making for balanced and compelling wines, such as this one. For this 2022, Theopolis fermented their Cortada Alta Pinot with de-stemmed whole berries in a three-ton open top, stainless steel fermenter and used just 27% of new French Oak barrels, and gave it 10 months to mature, before bottling it unfined and unfiltered. I’ve been following Theopolis for any years now and the wines here are getting better and ore interesting with every set of releases and I highly recommend them.
($50 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive