Review from WeelyWinePick.com

DRINK WHAT THE PROS ARE DRINKING

2004 Russian River Valley Bacigalupi Vineyard Pinot Noir
by John Tyler Wines

 Tyler Heck, wine maker at John Tyler Wines, had a bottle of his Pinot under the table, and the barrage of silly questions I asked him paid off when he finally poured me a glass.  Tyler makes wine from the fruit grown by John Bacigalupi on his family’s historic vineyard in Healdsburg.
  Fruit from Bacigalupi Vineyard has been used to make single-vineyard wines by such prominent wineries as Rudd and Williams Selyem.  Not impressed yet?  In 1973 Chateau Montelena purchased 14 tons of Wente Clone Chardonnay from Bacigalupi Vineyard.  Three years later, that Chardonnay was mistaken by judges for a Batard-Montrachet in the Judgment of Paris, winning the competition that shocked the wine world.
  Tyler doesn’t release his Pinot Noir until he feels it’s ready, after over 3 and a half years conditioning in the bottle after aging in new French oak.  It delivers a voluptuous front, mid-mouth and back-end flavor that got my mind turning with ways to describe it.  In a year that has seen the release of Grand Cru Burgundies that fetch prices around $500, Pinot lovers have no choice but to seek out better values.  At $42 a bottle, John Tyler is a smart choice over the collector’s items from France.  If this went up blind against the 2005 Burgundies in a modern day Judgment of Paris, my money is on fourth-generation winemaker Tyler Heck.

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