Twelve Clones is Morgan Winery’s Santa Lucia Highlands appellation blend Pinot Noir.
The Vineyards
The Morgan 2005 Twelve Clones Pinot Noir is produced from top quality Santa Lucia Highlands Vineyards. Morgan’s organically farmed Double L Vineyard is 53% of the 2005 blend, and contributes complexity with 12 different clonal selections of Pinot Noir. The cool Monterey climate and strong Salinas Valley winds combine to form a very long growing season, creating intense, ripe flavors with balancing acidity.
The Vintage
The 2005 vintage was outstanding, with cool, even temperatures producing a high quality crop. The Pinot Noir harvest started on September 9th and finished on October 24th. The extended growing season produced fine, fully mature fruit, with a graceful style and very clear expression of the Santa Lucia Highlands terroir.
Vinification & Aging
Grapes are hand-sorted in the vineyards and at the winery and are completely de-stemmed. Whole-berry fermentations are inoculated with RC212, D254, and Assmanshausen yeasts, and some native yeast fermentations. Small, open top fermenters with manual punch downs are utilized for optimum extraction while maintaining an elegant structure. The primary fermentation finishes in 10-12 days. The wine is transferredto a combination of medium and medium plus toast Burgundy barrels, of which 40% are new for malo-lactic fermentation and 11 months of aging. The wine was bottled, unfined, in August 2006.
Tasting Notes
The wine shows a medium garnet color with good clarity. The nose and palate show blackberry, cranberry, hard spices and the mineral notes of the appellation. The wine is medium to full in body and the softly integrated tannins segue into a long and balanced finish.
REVIEWS
89, Connoisseurs' Guide (February 2007)
If not an especially flamboyant wine, this latest edition from the talented hand of winemaker Dan Lee is absolutely solid in ripe yet balanced varietal fruit in both its rich, medium depth aromas and in its invitingly velvety palatal feel. A hint of piquancy at the end keeps things alive and directs the wine towards service with lighter meats like veal roasts.
Recommended, Detroit News, Sandra Silfven (April 9, 2007 Today's Recommended Wine)
Buckle your seatbelt: Bold cherry, blackberry, spice and vanilla aromas are as powerful as perfume, and carry straight through to the palate, where they are buoyed by acidity, alcohol, supple tannins and smoky oak. The finish is never-ending. This is essence of Pinot, produced in Morgan's Santa Lucia Highlands vineyards -- a little more than half from its organically farmed Double L Vineyard. It was aged in Burgundy barrels, 40 percent new. There are, as the name says, 12 clones of Pinot Noir in this wine. Alcohol is 14.2 percent. For the Pinot fanatic in your life, this would be the ultimate gift grown in this country.
Four Stars +, Restaurant Wine (Issue #117)
Fine quality: fragrant and very distinct, this is an excellent wine. Full bodied, medium rich, long and persistent on the finish, with complex aromas/flavors (blueberry, plum, toast, raspberry, red currant, spicy oak).
Highly Recommended, Decanter (May 2007)
Dan Lee's cool-climate winery gets most of its fruit from Monterey County. Winemaker, Gianni Abate, crafts Pinot Noirs of a distinctive, almost Burgundian character. The best come from the Santa Lucia Highlands, an east-sloping western benchland hit every afternoon with cold winds off Monterey Bay.
17/90 out of 100, California Grapevine (April-May 2007)
Santa Lucia Highlands-Medium-light ruby; attractive, spicy, fragrant, sweet ripe cherry fruit aroma with notes of clove and cinnamon; medium-fill body; tight, sharp, herbal, spicy, smoky, berry and cherry fruit flavors; well balanced; medium-full tannin; lingering aftertaste. Enjoyable to taste now as it developed with airing in the glass and should continue to improve with several more years of bottle aging.
91, James Laube's Recommended California Pinot Noirs (August/2007)
Smoky raspberry, dill, sage and cedar aromas carry over to the palate, where they're deep, concentrated, focused and persistent with ripe firm tannins.
Two Stars, San Francisco Chronicle (August 24, 2007)
Made from 53 percent of the organic Double L Vineyard fruit and 12 different clonal selections, this wine delivers a big dose of friendly cherry and plum fruit in a balanced package. It was aged in oak for 11 months.
