Drinking the 2005 Williams Selyem Russian River Valley Pinot Noir
This week has been a little hectic, coupled with a few periods of intense boredom. A strange combination indeed. Anyway, I thought it was time to crack open some of my purchases from earlier this year, and there’s no better place to start than Williams Selyem!
A few months ago, I made my first purchase through THE LIST at Williams Selyem. It was quite an honor to send them hundreds of dollars; I have loved the other Williams Selyem wines I’ve had, and I look forward to drinking many more in the future. Their Pinot Noirs are quite good if you believe the wine media. I have had only two Williams Selyem Pinot Noirs in the past, but both were terrific and, of course, entirely different from one another.
This time around, I decided to open one of my three bottles of 2005 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. The wine is a six-vineyard blend; you can find many more technical details at the link in the previous sentence. Suffice it to say the good people at Williams Selyem provide lots of neat technical content on their wines, such as the toast levels of their barrels. I love that sort of thing. At 13.9% alcohol, this wine should be a nice, slightly subdued expression of the cherry bonanza that is often reflected in Russian River Pinot Noir wines.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the cellar. I opened the bottle, which looked fine (the cork looked fine, etc.). I poured myself a glass (I used a Royal Doulton Pinot glass, BTW) and…uhh, hmm. I wasn’t impressed. I was depressed, in fact. Read on:
- Aroma: Subdued at first, hints of red cherry and red plum; opened up into a kirsch, chocolate, and leather bouquet. A bit strange for a Pinot Noir, but not bad…although a lot of alcohol was detectable in addition to the other aroma elements.
- Flavor: Slightly sweet at the start, red cherries and acidity dominate the quick finish. Somewhat thin and flaccid, not what I was expecting.
- General impression: Either I opened this bottle too early in its life, or this wine isn’t too thrilling. Or it’s an off bottle. In any case, I’m disappointed.
So what gives? I am not entirely sure. I don’t think the bottle is off, although that’s a possibility. I do think I need to try some more of this wine again after I’ve kept it in my fridge using my WineKeeper Keeper for a while. But I was pretty shocked at the total lack of balance and clarity of this wine. I’m going to chalk it up to a weird experience and keep trying with the RRV release. After all, I have two more bottles of it.
POSTSCRIPT: I tried more of the wine from this bottle a couple of days after writing my review. The wine tasted better, but still not quite as balanced or rich as I would expect. But there was some improvement, so perhaps I simply opened the first bottle too soon!
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Wow! I just bought this bottle!!! Anyway, this may be optimism but I think you opened this bottle way too soon. With the amount of structure I experienced in my last bottle of Williams Selyem I would guess a few years of cellar time are needed to balance out the flavors, acidity and tannins. Anyway, I’ll check back for future reports & post when I do eventually open this bottle….Hopefully a few years from now although potentially tomorrow….
June 24th, 2007 at 12:48 am
I’m really curious about this wine now. Some of the reviews I’ve seen, particularly on cellartracker.com, say this wine is ready to drink today. Others say to keep the wine for a while, at least a few years. The other Williams Selyem wines I’ve had were quite different, both from each other and from this RRV release, so it’s hard to compare for me….
I guess what I noticed is that even with some decanting, this wine seemed a little thin, or flat, or whatever you want to call it. In other words, it didn’t seem to have a lot of aging potential. I’m really starting to think I simply got a bad bottle.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Just had a bottle of this last night. I’ve been on THE LIST (God, such pretense in all caps!) for about 10 years now, and I think I have a good sense of what their various offerings can amount to.
The RRV ‘05 is drinking as it should–and your initial notes are spot on. Plenty of cherry pie filling and maraschino, big whiff of some undergrowth and sweet, wet bark; a fairly light body and bright acids. I wouldn’t call it flaccid or thin; it’s just more Burgundian in profile than some prefer.
What I did notice in the mid-palate is what I’ll qualify as “tomato acid”–the tannins are especially rough for such a soft wine, some aromas bordering on volatility. It blew off a little as the wine sat open, so I’m thinking that an additional year or two in bottle will serve this wine well.
I don’t keep any RRV pinots for much longer than 5 years; fruit quality is compromised. I’ve found that northern and coastal climates–Anderson Valley in particular–produce wines that can stand a couple years beyond that, but again, patience over the first 2-5 years is most rewarding.
After about 7 years, even the best pinot noir (and I mean even the baddest monopole offerings from Burgundy) plateau or evolve to neither improvement nor decline. Don’t sit on your WS wines for longer than 5-7 years; you’ll be disappointed. And next time, open it during a good dinner that you haven’t cooked, with company you appreciate, in an instance when you aren’t between moods.