Spring Release 2025 Winemaker Letter
The 2022 vintage has produced Pinot Noirs with a remarkable signature: deep, powerful, resonant wines that are incredibly textured.
The 2022 Pinot Noirs were very much dominated by the concentrated fruit of the vintage when we bottled them a year ago. 2022 was a drought vintage and yields were half of normal, resulting in intense, rich wines. Their primary fruit expression when young was, shall we say, Rubenesque.
Since then, they’ve undergone an evolution: the wines have begun to gain definition, and the individual character of each bottling has started to appear. It’s deeply gratifying to see the terroir emerge from behind the powerful fruit of the vintage. The interaction between vintage character and terroir is fascinating to experience in these wines.
The 2022 Raschen Ridge is evolving into a hedonistic beauty. The singular tannins of this vineyard are fully present in the 2022 vintage, and the mouthfeel marks this as a top vintage for Raschen Ridge: long, supple, smooth and persistent. The finish simply goes on and on. As Antonio Galloni of Vinous wrote about this wine, “The 2022 Raschen Ridge is a worthy follow-up to the magical 2021; one of the defining attributes of the world’s greatest vineyards is their ability to confer a sense of place in all vintages…Raschen Ridge is one of those sites.”
And what to say about Block 8, the wine my father calls his grand cru? This vineyard continues to deliver exquisite balance, an ideal interplay of fruit and sophisticated structure. The naturally high acidity of this site is a check on the intensity of the 2022 vintage. Block 8 lovers will find this vintage to be very much in line with what they’ve come to expect from this bottling.
The 2022 Reserve is one of the finest vintages we’ve produced of this wine: classic, serious, refined, focused. Tasting this wine just three months ago, it evoked in my mind a fortress. Now that coiled intensity is beginning to open up, and there’s a quality of flow to the wine. I’m incredibly excited to see how this wine evolves. Often, it’s the densely packed baby monsters that evolve into the most elegant, complex and long-lived beauties.
Last but certainly not least, the 2023 Hirsch Estate Chardonnay, our first release from the 2023 vintage. The growing conditions in 2023 were the polar opposite of 2022: a long, wet and cold spring evolved into a long, cool, dry summer. Fall was equally mild, and harvest was the latest since the 1990s. The Hirsch Chardonnay born from these conditions is generous yet classy, subtle yet flavorful. The cool conditions preserved great aromatic detail in the wine, and this is a remarkably complex wine for its youth. I highly recommend this wine for those that love the wines of Chassagne.
The wines in this release are across the board deeply exciting and interesting. I can’t wait to hear what you think of them. My gratitude you for your support.