Roessler 2008 La Brisa Pinot Noir - Two Pack
$47.99 + $5 shipping
Condition: Red
Product: 2 2008 La Brisa Pinot Noir
CT link above
is this kosher?
Can these also have smoke taint?
Cheers
How does this compare to the Bluejay?
I’ve liked the Blue Jay, but will almost certainly need a good Pinot rat on this one to get a sense of the style/funk.
I hosted a wine party last night where one of the sessions was 8 bottles of Pinot Noir, blind tasted. 5 of the 8 were in the $20/bottle range. One was $50 (2007 Ken Wright Freedom Hill) and two were $5/bottle Little Penguin NV, which were the first & last bottles tasted.
Out of about 20 guests, the Little Penguin was #1 and #2 on many score-cards (Ken Wright came out middle-of-the-road). The general consensus was that those who weren’t big Pinot fans liked it because it was the least Pinotish of the group.
These guys know what they are doing! Even the Bluejay which WAS smoke tainted was delicious. They really did get it all out. This seems like a Sure Thing.
I agree the Blujay was smokey and I still loved it!
Cheers!
I just had my last bottle of this last week. Good timing, but I also just got a case from Ty. I declare a SIWBM. WD is trying to make me ignore that, and doing an excellent job of it.
Righty, here’s a post from the April Bluejay wooting which also points back to other recent Roessler wootings (yes, it’s my post, but I’m being efficient).
Here’s what winemaker Scott Shapley said during the Trio wooting about the forest floor and mushroomy quality of this La Brisa pinot. There are more comments about that wine there, of course.
BTW, RPM said last time he and SWMBO had liked all the Roessler (not bluejay) they’d tried. I suspect this may have included this La Brisa from the Trio offering.
Scientists have demonstrated that a drink or two a day can help prevent heart attacks.
In this regard, wine seems to be the most effective drink.
And red wine is the most effective type of wine…
And Pinot Noir is the most effective type of red wine.
The key ingredient is resveratol, which is found in high concentration in Pinot Noir.
So take your medicine!
LifeTips at GreenTea
A doctor’s view at Preiser Key
Reviews:
Blogwinecellar does a horizontal Roessler comparative review of 2007, evidently taking good care to review properly. Doesn’t like the La Brisa half as much as the Bluejay, but that may be that it’s not as good a young drinker. (Scott…?)
Napa Cabs has a good description, and is selling the 2006 for $25/bottle. +Shipping, of course. But gives 5% off 6, so is probably about comparable in price.
And this may be a wine you want to keep, rather than drink young?
Ditto K&L with great descriptions of the out of stock 2007. Even talks to a “Shapely” Scott!
For vertical comparison, It may be that the 2007 is unsurpassed as a year so far, and I’m guessing 08 isn’t as amazing [EDIT though Scott says fortunately there’s no smoke issue].
Unusually, Snooth is informative for the La Brisa 06 (with Wine and Spirits mag review) and La Brisa 07. I like the generic Pinot blurb they put there too.
Vinography put the 04 La Brisa at the top of its list (9.5).
I think I could do with a SWMBO instead. More fun: more entertainment options open up…
For those lost folk afraid of the smoke monster, Winemaker Scott Shapley on how to deal with Smoke Taint and still make a good wine.
Hello everyone!
This is Winemaker Scott signing in. I’ll try to head backwards and catch up with some other questions, but first off, I wanted to let everyone know that the 2008 La Brisa was Not smoke-tainted. There were some areas in the Sonoma Coast AVA that were affected, but we got lucky in our vineyards. Every vineyard we had in Anderson Valley was Smoke-tainted, but none of our other sources got hit.
That said, the Sonoma Coast AVA can certainly give some of the GOOD smokey aromas you can get in Pinot, but I’m just happy to not have the actual taint in another region. It worked out fine on the Bluejay, but I always like to be able to do a little as is necessary to a wine between Grape and bottle, so I was happy to only have to work on the Mendocino lots.
More soon…
I know that this repeats my first post, but Iwanted to make sure to respond to you that smokeitaint wasn’t an issue on the lots that went into the 2008 La Brisa.
The wines are certainly different, in that I’m trying to let them be expressive of their individual regions. Bluejay gives a good representation of Anderson Valley Terroir, while the La Brisa is a good, broad representation on the Sonoma Coast AVA, including both “True Coast” and the Petaluma Gap.
I think I saw my tasting notes at the bottom of the intro page if you want to refer back to it, but generally I get more of the forest floor side to the earthiness on the La Brisa and more of the mushroomy side on the Bluejay. Both have a lot of fruit ranging from red to black, but I’d say there’s more blackberry in the La Brisa and more dark Cherry and fig in the Bluejay…
It is really subjective, of course, and different people may have different preferences based on the basic character of each region. I like them both, but I’ll be in the mood for one or the other on different occasions. I go through this with all of our wines. It’s hard to pick a favorite because they’re are made to express their differences, and at any given time I may prefer one to another. I always hate to have to give that type of evasive answer to people when they ask me what my favorite is, but sometimes, while I may have a favorite at that moment, I feel like I need folks to know that I may have a different favorite later on in the day, depending on how they are opening up or what I’m eating, etc.
In any case, they are different wines, but I like to make our wines similarly across the board so that the majority of the differences you see have to do with terroir rather than winemaking style. Even with the smoke-taint filtration on the Bluejay lots, it’s a good representation of Anderson Valley Pinot, it’s just that some of the aromatics got knocked back for a while after filtration.
This is basically what I wrote down in CT for the 2006 La Brisa last week. I really liked it, thought it was a little bigger than an average Pinot, lots of dark fruit and earthiness. Nice acidity also.
How does the 2008 compare to the 2006? Anybody?
Great to learn more about the terroirs!
aha! So, “knocked back for a while”… does that mean the aromatics will return? And what sort and how? 
I’ve no idea how filtration works on such flavours.
Glad to hear this missed that smoke anyway. Will this drink young too, or are the tannins a bit harsher than in the Bluejay? Is it good to keep for several years (how long?).
I am positively bursting at the seams storage room wise … but it’s Roessler … sigh … in for 1 to make the rat deadline
Nope.