I started buying Dehlinger in the 1994 vintage after reading about it in the Wine Advocate. I bought through the 2009 vintage, but from 2003 onwards I felt there was a shift in style to a riper, darker wine, and I was starting to become more interested in other PNs as well as Burgundy. I kept most of the wines for quite a few years, but in all that tme I never had a bottle I felt was over the hill, save one 1992 Reserve PN from another person’s cellar, which I thought might have been heat damaged.
Several months ago, K&L listed one bottle each of the 1981 through 1984 Pinots at retail (at $40 each). I bought all four as I wanted to see what had become of these older wines. Last Monday we had an offline at Sole in San Mateo where we opened all four. There were a bunch of other good wines at the offline which I won’t try to recount. Here are the exact notes I took at the time.
1981 Dehlinger PN: Very nice nose, very Burgundy. Really nice. Long, refined finish with just a hint of “good” sweetness.
1982 Dehlinger PN: A little older and less expressive on the nose. Slightly washed out. Well into a graceful decline. Much better with food. Turned out really good.
1983 Dehlinger PN: Skunky nose. Not bad on the palate; some fruit, but not that engaging. Dead at the end.
1984 Dehlinger PN: Also a bit skunky, slightly stewed. Pretty big with more fruit, more structure. Declined, showed more ox.
In the end, I thought two of these (81/82) were very fine and two were not worth drinking. Early on many people found the 82 light, old or boring. For me it became interesting just as soon as I started eating (just a piece of bread). By the end I think most tasters liked it as well. The 81 was beautiful from the start. Some people by the end may have preferred the 82 but I still liked the 81 better.
This was a very interesting tasting experience with a couple of nice rewards. Something to think about if you have CA PN in your cellar. BTW last night I opened a 2000 Dehlinger PN High Plains and it was very youthful. The early 00s wines have been fantastic for a number of years.
I have drank most of my Dehlinger PN’s at 8-10 years and have always found them to be youthful and delicious. Amazing that an '81 was still drinking well.
A fascinating and enjoyable study of roughly 35 year old bottles. For me, each of the wines had its charms, and each passed through good and weak phases over the course of the evening. Couple of the wines started out nicely and faded, while the other two did just the opposite. These were definitely the oldest Dehlingers I’ve had, and showed the strength of Tom’s wines. I’m not sure more recent wines (which seem to be somewhat riper and more opulent) will fare quite as well after 30+ years, though I wasn’t drinking Dehlinger back when these 80s wines were released, so not sure how they compare to today’s wines.
I think Tom and Dehlinger had about a twelve year stretch from 1992 through 2003 where they produced some extraordinary wines.
Luckily, I still have some wines from that stretch in my cellar. A '97 Reserve from a while back was terrific. I will be opening an '01 Estate in the near future.
Craig - My buying closely mirrors yours. I bought from the 1996 vintage through the 2010s, having also stopped because the 2003 through 2007 wines stopped doing it for me. But when I started drinking the 08s and 09s, I found myself enjoying virtually every one of them. So much for timing the market!
While it was before my time there, I think 1983 was the beginning of very tight filtration (membrane) which continued until the 1986 vintage.
Beginning with 1987 vintage, filtration became incrementally less tight. 1991/1992 were the first vintages where some of the wine was bottled unfiltered. 1993 thru the end of my decade there were bottled unfiltered, even if the label did not state that.
I suspect the additional handling of certain vintages may have removed some of the wines’ staying power by removal of material and minor oxygen exposure. Still, solid wines they were.
It’s just outside your date range, but I still remember that the 1985 Dehlinger Pinot was what first really turned me onto Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. Tasted it at the winery around 1991 (when you could still just stop in to taste there) when they poured a couple of library Pinots in addition to their current releases.
Leonard, do you have experience with the mid 2000s vintages, and if so do you disagree with the refrain that these wines were notably riper?
For me, it’s not so much that the wines were riper, although I think they were, it’s that they came across as awkward, showing none of the grace that I’d come to expect from Dehlinger pinots.