2015 Pinot Noir – Dijon 777
In 2015, among a cellar full of great wine, several barrels of Dijon 777 stood out as exceptional. I set aside a portion of the wine from four different barrels to make what was for us, a rare, single-clone wine, The only other single-clone wine we have produced was a single-clone Pommard in 2009 that received a 93-point rating in Wine Spectator and sold out quickly. This time we had the opportunity to showcase the intense red fruit Dijon 777 is known for and the result was another spectacular, but very limited, wine. The 2015 RRV Dijon 777 is a bright, silky-smooth wine which carries the flavors of wild strawberries and bing cherries perfectly.
The wine in the final blend was aged in 25% new French oak barrels, 25% in one-year-old barrels and 50% in a couple of my favorite older barrels that had yielded some very nice wine in years past. Interestingly, 75% of the fruit for this wine came from a block in the far South-east corner of the vineyard and not the vaunted Wedding Block that has typically produces our best wines. Go figure. In subsequent years I used fruit from this same block to make our Pearl White Pinot Noir in 2016 and 2017 and our 2018 Haley Rose Rosé.