As I mentioned in my earlier post, last week was crazy busy. One of the reasons was the Warehouse Sale at the shop where I work. As a part of this sale, we had the opportunity to have Austin Hawley of Hawley Wines in to pour their new releases. Austin and his brother Paul work with their father John in the production of their wines. You may not know who John Hawley is, but you have probably had at least one of his wines before. John was the founding winemaker at California’s Clos du Bois, where he worked for 6 years. He left there and went to become head winemaker at another winery you may have heard of–Kendall Jackson. John was at KJ for 10 years. He is often credited with bringing barrel fermentation of chardonnay to California on a large scale. John left Kendall Jackson to release his 1996 vintage of his own label. The estate is located on Bradford Mountain in Dry Creek Valley. They have a tasting room in downtown Healdsburg.
One of my favorite wines that Austin poured was their 2010 Reserve Pinot Noir. The fruit for this wine is sourced from the Estine family’s vineyard in the Russian River Valley, which is planted with the widely recognized Dijon Clone Pinot Noir. This vineyard is organically farmed. The wine itself is a deep ruby red. The nose has a dark fruit with a touch of cracked black pepper. You pick up hints black cherry and spice on the tongue, evolving through some nice back side tannins to a long smooth finish. Did I mention that this wine has been in the bottle for less than 3 weeks. It hasn’t even had a chance to settle down yet. Give it six months and it will be amazing. Give it 5 years, it should melt your face off.
Rating: Love It+++
Price: $50.50/btl; $45.25/btl case price
There were less than 270 cases of this wine made. If you are interested, I can get help you acquire an allotment of this great wine! Let me know!
Dave
“You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one.” —Len Evans
Wine for Real People 
March 28th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Ola! Dave,
Very interesting, Pinot Noir wines are the hot ticket in red wine these days. Have you noticed? Ever since the main character in the movie Sideways identified Pinot as his favorite grape type sales for this red wine have skyrocket. (The character of Miles also maligned Merlot wines in the movie, and the sales of Merlot have suffered ever since). Pinot Noir is the grape used to make the red wines of Burgundy in northern France. The reputation of those wines is so great that Pinot Noir from anywhere else is inevitably compared to the French model. That makes it tough, but the enthusiasm of wine makers around the world doesn’t seem to be blunted by the challenge. Pinot production is up everywhere and new vineyards are still being planted. Aside from having to compete with Burgundy’s example, Pinot Noir is a difficult grape to grow, even for the French. Any true lover of the wine will admit that if Pinot Noir is sublime at times it can also be frustrating.
Regards