2005 Rosella's from Kosta-Browne

Only the most reputed winemakers gets to purchase grapes from the famous vineyards of Gary Pisoni and Gary Franscioni in Santa Lucia Highlands, and Michael Browne of the premium Pinot Noir winery Kosta-Browne is one of very few who can boast to buy from both Pisoni Vineyard, Gary's Vineyard and Rosella's Vineyard.
The Rosella's Vineyard is located on the middle slope in the central parts of the Santa Lucia Highland bench, a location where the cool airflow from the Monterey Bay in the north still is important, but where there also are influences from the warmer inland part of the Salinas Valley. Therefore the wines from site normally combines high aromatics and a fresh acidity with some weight and good mouthfeel. The vineyard covers 20.25 hectares and is plantet to Pinot Noir of the clones Dijon 667, Dijon 777, Dijon 828, as well as the suitcase clone known as Pisoni Clone.
The 2005 is the first vintage from this vineyard for Kosta-Browne.

2005 Pinot Noir Rosella's Vineyard / 89 p
The clones Dijon 828 and Pisoni Clones are used for this wine, and the grapes are harvested at high 25.8 Brix, or higher (whoch in my opinion is too high to capture finesse). For some wines, or some part of some wines, Michael Browne works with whole cluster, but from this vineyard he prefer to destem all grapes. As always, there is a myriad of variations when it comes to vinification, each clone and vineyard, and part of the vineyard, are treated differently, and in the end it's all about blending all fractions for each wine in the very best way. For this wine, vinification goes something like this: five days of cold soak i small open top fermenters of stainless steel, followed by an alcoholic fermentatio that last for aound ten days, with pigeage two times per day. The wine is then transferred into French oak barrels, around 50 percent new, for malolactic fermentation and 15 monts of ageing.
In some years, alocohol reach around 14.5 to 14.8 percent, but in this vintage the label show 15.3 percent. Which is high, too high.
Even though ripeness was high, the wine offers a charming and intense nose, loades with red berries and a dash of rosehips. (I have tasted so many wines from Rosella's, from other producers, and the rose petals and rosehips seems to be part of the vineyards personality.) At first there was a slight oaky note, but it was toned down as the wine opened up with air. Lovely! I wouldn't really call it "burgundian like", it's to intense and rich for that, but there are several details in the wine reminiscent of great premier crus from Gevrey-Chambertin, although in a very ripe year. Also, details remiscent of Grenache...
On the palate, it's medium bodied, fresh and pure with a ripe but not really sweetish red fruit flavor. Tannins are silky, which makes the wine so enjoyable, and acidity is fresh but in no sense sharp. It's a very fine wine indeed, but I would have scored it slighly higher if it didn't have that slightly sunburnt grape skin flavor (it's almost not there) and if the finish would have been a little longer. Other than that, there's nothing to complain about if you are looking for a rich, intense and seductive Californian pinot.
I would actually pour it directly from the bottle, for everyone to enjoy the evolution with air (with more aeration, it becomes more Grenache-like), and I recommend a serving temperature at around 16 degress, but not higher than that.
Drink it 2011-2013

Two 2007 pinots from Kosta-Browne

I’m a bit confused over the wines from Kosta-Browne. It’s always one of the most exciting visits and barrel tastings one can do in California – then the wines show great finesse and complexity, and friends of mine with great skills as wine tasters, have been very excited after these barrel tastings, and even compared them with tastings in the cellars of great domaines in Burgundy. Then, when the wines are bottled and retasted back home, it's most likely they will taste more full bodied, riper and sweeter with a notable higher alcohol compared to what you remember from the cellar tasting. I know impressions will be the same in many cases at a lot of wineries, and the explanation is (most likely) that the cellars are cooler than your dining room, therefore the wines tend to show more of their elegance, and less of oak, sweetness and alcohol.
Still I continue to buy the wines from Kosta-Browne. I want to see which way they will go with age. And, I’m happy to say that they will become more elegant with just a few years of bottle age. At the moment, I just love to drink the 2005s of Kosta-Browne. Part of being a wine writer, wine connoisseur or wine lover is to understand how a certain wine evolves with age. Now I know how to treat these wines.

Kosta-Browne is an 11 000 cases per year operation based in a custom crush winery in Sebastopol, Russian River. It’s the Pinot Noir counterpart of wineries such as Kistler, and the range of pinot wines consists of a selection each from Russian River and Sonoma Coast, 8-9 vineyard selections per year plus a top selection of the four best barrels each year, logically called Pinot Noir 4-Barrel. Alsp you will find some syrahs here.

2007 Pinot Noir Gary’s Vineyard / 90-91 p
Gary’s Vineyard is one of the finest in the Santa Lucia Highlands, and for many winemakers who buy grapes from here, that selection will be one of their best wines. This is also what I have found at Kosta-Browne in some previous vintages – but not in this one. Perhaps it’s just because the wine is young and a bit sturdy, but even after an hour in the glass, the wine didn’t open up in the way I expected. Not that this is a bad or boring wine, not at all, it’s actually a very good wine, but compared to the lovely wine from Amber Ridge Vineyard, it doesn’t show. The color is slightly paler, the nose more acidic with sour cherries rather than sweet raspberries (this is something I like), but it doesn’t have the same intensity or body.
Drink it 2010-2015.

2007 Pinot Noir Amber Ridge Vineyard / 93 p
I have often found that the Amber Ridge bottling is one of the most elegant of the pinots of Kosta-Browne. It comes from a 12.15 hectare vineyard near Windsor in one the coolest parts of Russian River, which to a great deal explains the elegance and fine acidic structure of the wine. The vineyard was planted in 2000 with the French clones Dijon 115, Dijon 667 and Dijon 777 and the soils is, as so often out here, the fine goldridge. Vinification and oak regime is the same as in the wine above, but still the oak is a bit more integrated with just a slight sweet scent of vanilla. The overall balance is absolutely fine, the quality of the fruit is impressive – although the ripeness is high which have made the texture lush and silky, there is still a nice fragrance of sweet and freshly crushed raspberries with a lighter and more aromatic quality than in the wine from Gary’s Vineyard. It’s just in the finish of the taste the almost 15 percent of alcohol strenght reveals itself, so to avoid any “problems” with that, I recommend a serving temperature of around 16 degrees Celsius. You may decant this wine if you like, but it is not necessary.
Drink it 2010-2017.

Russian River Pinot Noir 2005 from Kosta Browne

It all started in 1997, when Dan Kosta and Michael Browne decided to leave their jobs as waiters at restaurant John Ash & Co in Santa Rosa, to make fine wines of Pinot Noir. During a few months, they saved all the tip money and bought half a ton of Pinot Noir and some barrels. The wine turned out to be quite good, and after some years of trials and errors, and more vineyard sites (on contract, they don't own any vineyards) and tons of grapes added to their business, Kosta Browne had become a well known and respected winery with some great but hard to find wines, especially some vineyard designated wines from Russian River and Santa Lucia Highlands.
I’ve been to the cellar a few times, and it’s really a true exciting experience to taste barrel samples of different clones of Pinot Noir, wines made with or without stems, kept in old or new barrels, and of course from different vineyard sites and appellations. Tasting in their cool cellar, the high alcohol and the ripe fruit is not showing as much as is does from bottle, neither does the oak. These wines are big, for sure not burgundian like. However, from a philosophical point of view, they’re like the Californian counterparts of Lucien le Moine of Burgundy, wines that are much riper, more lush and intensely fruit driven than the wines from their neighbors. They also show higher alcohol (14.5 to 15.0 percent), silky tannins and upfront oak flavors. That’s the way they’re made. Like it or not.
So, do I like them? Yes and no. The range is wide, the wines are different, but overall the quality is high. I’ve tried many of the wines from barrel and young from the bottle, and I’ve always noticed that they need air and some bottle age.
Production is now up at 11 000 cases per year and the wine list consist of a dozen of Pinot Noir wines, and also some wines of Syrah.

2005 Russian River Pinot Noir / 86 p
This wine is made of Pinot Noir from a various range of vineyards in Russian River, predominately from the northern part of the appellation where the climate is a bit warmer. Some of the base wines in this blend are selections from Koplen Vineyard, Amber Ridge Vineyard and Cohn Vineyard, sources of great wines for singe vineyard bottling. Grapes are normally harvested at high 25-27 Brix (hence the riper style and higher alcohol), and after five days of cold soak, the juice is fermented in small open top fermenters (some of them of oak) with regular pigeage, and thereafter the wines are stored in small French oak casks, 30 percent new, for 16-17 months.
Tasted two years ago, this wine was still very young and a bit over the top with its ripe fruit, and I would never have used the description “elegant”. Today I might do that! Still it is fruit forward with loads of sweet raspberries and almost cooked strawberries, but there are also more refined notes of lighter red berries to be found. I like the nose of this wine, and now with some bottle age, notes of chocolate and ancho chile (a secondary mature aroma which I think is complex, although not one you should find in a young Pinot Noir wine like this) have become parts of the flavor profile. Some earthy notes join the slightly sweet and fruity palate, tannins are silky and acidy good but not fresh, and the aftertaste lingers for a minute.
I would serve this wine at 15-16 degrees in a Bordeaux shaped glass rather than the typical Burgundy glass (that’s a bit too big for a ripe and intense wine like this).
Drink it 2010.