Tasting Notes

WA86+

From the best-known of his own vineyards, planted in 1983; east-facing; and at the southern edge of the Eola Hills, Wright's 2010 Pinot Noir Canary Hill heads with fungal and humus-like notes that persist all the way through an oddly opaque finish in which the bitter edge of dark berries in no way dissipates a sense of darkness and diffusion. There is a brooding and as such intriguing persistence here to be sure, allied to slightly drying tannin. Hopefully a future tasting will find it possessed of clearer and purer fruit character - and I've made allowances in my rating for the possibility of a temporarily weak showing (with apologies for simply not having found time to re-taste it prior to publishing my report) - but I won't attempt to speculate as to where this is headed. (I tasted a 2000 alongside that struck me as possessing considerable if interesting oxidative overtones and whose fruit I found largely dried out, though I'll refrain from extrapolating on the basis of four or five isolated older bottles of Wright Cellars wines I have tasted over the past several years.)

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