2023 Razorback Vineyard Pinot Noir

The 2023 growing season was the coolest season since 2011 and one of the longest, latest growing seasons in the 40+ years of Fogarty Winery. We began the harvest on September 25 with the Sauvignon Blanc from Gist Ranch and began to pick Pinot Noir later that week. The estate Chardonnay harvest didn’t begin till October 19th. We finished with our Nebbiolo on November 14th, one of the latest picks we have ever made!

The wines are bright and aromatic with good depth and intensity. It is an elegant vintage that should age well. The wines will benefit from some additional time in the bottle as they are showing somewhat reticently in their youth. This seems to be a very strong vintage for both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, especially the old vines on the estate – Rapley Trail and Langley Hill in particular.

"The 2023 Pinot Noir Razorback Vineyard is the lowest-elevation Pinot Noir on the estate, planted in 1986. It's a very tightly coiled, earthy wine that is a little hesitant to reveal itself. Light and elegant, the 2023's fruit is pushed very far into the background, leaving an echo of wet soil, iron and attractive savory undertones." - Billy Norris, Vinous 92 points
Our winemaking is focused on allowing the unique signature of each vineyard site to be expressed. We ferment all of our Pinot Noir in small lots of between one and two tons. We utilize varying percentages of whole bunches (approximately 25-50%), tailored to each site, and ferment the wines without the addition of yeast. Our maceration period lasts from 10-21 days, often including a short per-fermentation cold soak. We age our Pinot Noir in 3 year air dried French Oak, exclusively from the forest of Chatillon. The wines are pressed in a traditional basket press and allowed to settle before barrelling.The wines spend two winters in barrel and are racked only at bottling.
The Razorback Vineyard was planted in 1986 and is the lowest elevation vineyard on the Estate, at 1400 ft. With a cool northeastern exposure, this 2-acre hillside is planted with four clones (115, 667, 777 and Swan) of Pinot Noir on fractured sandstone and shale. We ferment the clones together to encourage complexity and intrigue in the finished wine. This rather steep vineyard is dry-farmed, receiving some of the cooling fog that settles below our other Estate vineyards. 2011 was the first vintage we chose to bottle as a stand-alone, single-vineyard wine.