2016 Williams Selyem Pinot Noir Allen Vineyard

The 2016 Pinot Noir Allen Vineyard has a beautiful bouquet of Bing cherry and cranberry fruit intermixed with subtle violets, damp forest floor, and candied orange peel. Classically styled, with medium-bodied depth and richness, it has a tight, vibrant texture, bright acidity, and present, ripe tannins. This is classic, age-worthy Russian River Pinot Noir that's going to be better in a year or three and keep for over a decade.

The 2016 Pinot Noir Allen Vineyard is pretty, open-knit and easy to enjoy young. Crushed flowers, tobacco, licorice and dried herbs all lift from the glass. The 2016 offers lovely depth and silkiness. Pinot can be deceptive, but my sense is that the Allen will peak a bit earlier than many of these 2016s given its mid-weight structure and slightly forward profile.

(13.9% alcohol; bottled in January of this year; from grapes picked during the first week of August): Good dark red. Very primary scents of black raspberry and licorice, plus a whiff of exotic fruits. Wonderfully sweet, sappy and plush, with ripe acidity giving shape to the middle palate. I like the combination of sweetness and medicinal reserve. Not at all angular but in an in-between stage today and quite possibly in the process of shutting down in bottle. Finishes with firm but refined tannins and a lingering note of cocoa powder. Winemaker Mangahas compares this wine to the 2013 at the same stage of its development, in that the earlier wine was also a bit disjointed and slow to evolve. But the crop level was lower in 2016.