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2012 Kutch Pinot Noir McDougall Ranch - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (1/1/2022)
Summary: Wine needs at least 2 hours of air to show its intended profile. After 2 hours: Rustic red raspberry notes on the palate, plush on the mouthfeel, and Burgundian in style. Delicious and only beginning to come of age. Lone critique was a consistently muted nose.
Full Note: Decanted and revealed minimal sediment. Cork in perfect shape and barely soaked. Wonderful aromas of red raspberry with soft dark cherries wafting out of the decanter. First taste at 30 min: Muted nose of dense red fruit. Still somewhat primary on the palate – earthy raspberry notes with dirty cherries. Drank a small glass over the 30 to 90 minute period post-decanting and the wine evolved greatly to a robust, intense Burgundian Pinot. Even at 90 minutes I felt the wine was only barely scratching its potential. At 2 hours the wine was reaching a fantastic place despite a more muted nose – rustic red fruits, nice structure, elegant balance between tasty primary flavors and earthy light yeast. At 2.5 - 3 hours a plushness came over the mouthfeel while the earthy red fruit flavors continued to sing. A delicious California Pinot Noir with all the strength of New World fruit but delivered with the finesse and elegance of a 1er Cru Burgundy. I always say McDougal Ranch Pinots need at least 10 years aging before showing their mettle and this tasting only solidifies that view. Jamie Kutch continues to deliver in a trademark manner I always love – rich New World fruit in a balanced Old-World style. Be certain to give his big wines plenty of air to evolve into their beautiful final form. This wine is only beginning to come into its own. (93 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
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Great note! These are such great wines!
The 2012 Falstaff is my all time favorite Kutch wine, so not surprised the McDougall showed so well.
I have been digging in to my 2012 Kutch pinots and loving them! Thanks for sharing your note.
What a helluva TN that is, Kevin. Well done.
Been a while since I opened the 2012 (back in 2017), I know that for me that Jamie and the vintage made bigger wines. I have a single bottle left, so the notes like this help me calibrate when to open the next one.
For what it’s worth, we did a recent blind tasting, where each of 5 guys picked a single producer, and then 2 wines by that producer to go into the blind event. So, 10 wines total. I picked Kutch, and the 19 Falstaff placed second, the 19 Graveyard first. Of note, these were diverse palates, and a couple of the guys had limited exposure to Kutch. In the end, those two Kutch wines beat everything else on the table, and that 19 Graveyard was gorgeous, or as we say these days I guess, it was “gorg”.
Yes, the McDougal wines continue to age amazingly well.
I have a half-dozen 2009s as well as a '09 3L that should be my Guinea pigs for longer age-ability. I will check in on one of the 2009s in the coming months but I expect that to need plenty of air and have years and years of life left in the bottle.
One thing I don’t own enough of is Jamie’s Graveyard Block. I own a few '17 Bohan Graveyard Block wines that I mostly bought for the novelty of having them. Opened one for a Halloween tasting (i.e. “graveyard” and black label … I’m cheesy, what can I say?) and it was fabulous. a really delicious offering with a subtle texture difference that was really pleasant. An enormously underrated and under-publicized wine.
Kevin, even the regular 2017 Bohan is dynamite. Always reminds me of a lighter bodied Burg. I bought a bunch of that, have a single bottle left.
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