2015 Walter Hansel Pinot Noir North Slope

A racy, exuberant wine, the 2015 Pinot Noir The North Slope Vineyard offers a striking expression of the vintage. Super-ripe red cherry, plum, chocolate, sweet spices and French oak build in this voluptuous Pinot Noir.

The 2015 Pinot Noir The North Slope Vineyard is another exuberant, racy Pinot from Stephen Hansel. All the elements take shape nicely in this voluptuous, racy wine. There is plenty of intensity but also terrific balance. Today, the North Slope is not as showy as some of the other wines in the lineup, but it has plenty of richness just waiting to fully emerge.

The 2015 Pinot Noir North Slope, 100% from Dijon clone 115, also performed spectacularly, no doubt because of the extremely tiny yields. This wine has a dense purple color, a gorgeously compelling nose of forest floor, spring flowers, blue, red and black fruits, followed by a full-bodied, layered and concentrated Pinot Noir that is as light as a ballerina on the palate, but at the same time, intense and rich. The finish just goes on and on. Drink it over the next decade or more. The 2015 Pinot Noirs are still in barrel, hence these notes are all barrel samples. This was the earliest harvest for Stephen Hansel in more than a generation and the yields were frightfully low, averaging 40% off their average production that is never that high to begin with. All of these Pinot Noirs enjoy a 5-6 day cold soak and tend to see 50%-60% new oak and the rest one-year-old oak. They are set to be bottled unfined and unfiltered in November 2016.