We just finished a tasting at Carlisle with Mike Officer this morning.
I had a glass in my hand the entire time so I did not get the chance to take notes and directly quote Mike. He had some extremely quotable notes
His son Riley is doing a lot more and Mike has turned into the barrel boy, his words.
We were treated with barrel samples of 22’ and 23’ wines. We started with 22’ Carlisle, 22 Old Hill, 22 Saitone and 22 Bedrock. We moved across to the warehouse and tasted the 22 and 23 Soberanes and then a new vineyard for Mike, Belloni West. They also have Belloni East and he’s unsure how the final blend will be; but likely more west than east.
Soberanes is the replacement for Rosella’s which had the vines swapped over to Pinot noir.
Mike has switched to DIAM corks to try and eliminate any TCA issues.
We need to see if @Tegan_Passalacqua can let Mike make some Ueberroth. Ueberroth is one of the few vineyards Mike says he would love to make.
As far as the tasting, Carlisle is by far the largest holding in my cellar. We love these wines in our home and continually buy large amounts every release. Everything we tasted was excellent. Belloni is going to be magnificent.
I am convinced Mike can not make a bad wine. By the way, the Mondeuse was actually determined to not be Mondeuse. Mike said this was identified after the fact as cal-zin. @Rich_Brown
Mike probably would not want this posted as he doesn’t want the attention. We ragged him about the Bedrock podcast and asked when he’s going to do another one. It would be cool to get all the zin-masters on a podcast together.
Great visit, great wines. Thank you Mike!
