The last few weeks have been informative on the subject of the age-ability and general quality of Tolosa's Pinot Noir. Our LA rep Jeff Kandell told me about a "Pinot Noir Shootout" that one of his accounts was hosting. This event puts together 20 world class wines and a large group of qualified professional tasters in an effort to rank aged red wine. The account had done a Cabernet Shootout previously and now wanted to try the same thing with Pinot Noir. I talked with my friend Mike Dunn who had participated with his Dunn Vineyards Cabernets in the first event and he said it was both legitimate and worthwhile. Tolosa decided to sponsor the event, which took place at Red, White and Bluezz in Pasadena, by donating some wine to be used for charitable fundraising, and the account asked if we had a wine made between 1990 and 2001 that we'd like to enter in the competition. We ended up entering our 2001 Estate Pinot Noir. Nobody, ourselves included imagined that the Tolosa wine would score that well against some extremely tough competition, including a La Tache from the famed DRC. We were pleasantly surprised to finish 9th out of the 20 wines. Only one California wine beat Tolosa and that was in 7th to our 9th place. More than half of this heavyweight group finished behind us in the ranking. Our wine at $55 was also the least expensive wine in the flight. As one journalist put it, "While hardly two buck Chuck the Tolosa wine was a bargain given the company it was in." I think these results speak not only to our Pinots age worthiness but also to the overall quality of our Pinot Noir.

Stimulated by this information we surveyed the other Pinots in our library and found that many of them are the equal of this 2001 and some to my taste, superior. I particularly like the 2002 Estate Pinot Noir and the 2003 is delicious as well. Only the 2004 has faded, but given how hot that vintage was that was not shocking. We tasted all of our "1772" Pinots as well as the Estate and they are ageing on pretty much the same pattern, but in a denser deeper mode.

In light of this tasting and seeing how great some of our Library wines are tasting we have decided to host a Library Tasting here at the winery on Sunday April 10^th, 2011. At the Library tasting guests will be able to taste our library wines varying in vintages we feel are at their prime. We will be featuring both Estate and “1772” series in the following varietals; Pinot Noir, Syrah and Chardonnay.  It’s just $15 for General Public and $10 for Wine Club. You can sign-up online by clicking here or by calling the tasting room at (805)782-0500.  And trust me after tasting some of these wines you will see how Tolosa’s wines are uniquely age worthy!

-Larry Brooks.