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Wine Details
Price:
$40.00 per bottle
Description:
500 cases produced. This is a new wine for Bethel Heights, a blended Reserve Pinot Noir that bears a family name rather than a place name, breaking with our twenty-year tradition of celebrating the unique characteristics of very site-specific pinot noirs. It is composed of fruit from Bethel Heights Wädenswil Block, Bethel Heights Flat Block, and Seven Springs Vineyard, in about equal parts. In blending this wine we watched lots that we knew were terrific stand-alone wines disappear into a new wine that has its own character and exceptional quality. "The 2002 Pinot Noir Casteel Reserve is a superb debut for this new label. Its sublime aromatics burst with flowers, spices, and copious quantities of dark fruits. Expansive, ample, and wonderfully harmonious, its concentrated, deep character offers loads of highly expressive violet, rose, cherry, blackberry, and blueberry flavors. Having tasted Bethel Heights's wines from each individual vineyard included in this blend, there is no doubt in my mind that the sum is greater than the individual parts." (93) Wine Advocate
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Varietal Definition
Pinot Noir:
The name is derived from the French words for ‘pine’ and ‘black’ alluding to the varietals' tightly clustered dark purple pine cone shaped bunches of fruit. Pinot Noir grapes are grown around the world, mostly in the cooler regions, but the grape is chiefly associated with the Burgundy region of France. It is widely considered to produce some of the finest wines in the world, but is a difficult variety to cultivate and transform into wine. By volume most Pinot Noir in America is grown in California with Oregon coming in second. Other regions are Washington State and New York.During 2004 and the beginning of 2005, Pinot Noir became considerably more popular amongst consumers in the United States, possibly because of the movie Sideways. Being lighter in style, it has benefited from a trend toward more restrained, less alcoholic wines. It is the delicate, subtle, complex and elegant nature of this wine that encourages growers and winemakers to cultivate this difficult grape. Robert Parker has described Pinot Noir: "When it's great, Pinot Noir produces the most complex, hedonistic, and remarkably thrilling red wine in the world."
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