2022 Littorai Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard Anderson Valley
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How full and heavy the wine feels in your mouth, like the difference between skimmed milk and cream. More alcohol, sugar and oak ageing make a wine fuller.
The drying, grippy feel on your gums and tongue, as with strong tea. It comes from the skins and seeds of black grapes and from oak, and softens with age.
How much sugar you taste, from dry to sweet. Fruity is not the same as sweet: a dry wine can taste of ripe fruit.
How fresh and juicy the wine is: acidity makes your mouth water. High acidity tastes lively and refreshing, low acidity soft and round.
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The bars follow how sommeliers taste (WSET): body, tannin, sweetness and acidity, each from low to high.
Body: fairly light. Like most red wines from ; 13.5% alcohol.
Tannin: medium. From ; aged in oak.
Sweetness: dry. Red wine from is almost always dry.
Acidity: fairly high. from the fairly cool climate of North Coast.
Aromas: earthy notes, flowers and red fruit, typical of
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Log inThe Pinot Noir grapes for the Littorai Pinot Noir Les Larmes Anderson Valley are hand-picked at night with very strict selection. In the vinification cellar, they are destemmed and crushed, leaving a small portion of the bunches intact. This entire collection of grapes and bunches undergoes temperature-controlled alcoholic fermentation (28°C) with wild (varietal) yeasts in stainless steel tanks for over two weeks. This is followed by pressing, after which the young wine is transferred to French oak barriques for malolactic fermentation and aging. After approximately 14 months, the wine is assembled and bottled without fining or filtration. This entire process complies with organic rules and regulations but is not certified. Anderson Valley in Mendocino County is only fifteen miles long, but allow yourself ample time to explore this incredibly complex and geologically diverse region. It is worth the trip for the scenic beauty of the valley and the picturesque towns of Boonville and Philo, but there are also about 20 local wineries to visit. As a wine destination, the Anderson Valley is relatively young. The climate was long considered too cool for Vitis vinifera. Read more under the link: Appellation
The Pinot Noir grapes are hand-picked at night with very strict selection. In the vinification cellar, half of the bunches are destemmed and crushed, while the other half are left intact. The grapes and bunches are subjected to separate, temperature-controlled alcoholic fermentation (28°C) with wild (grape-native) yeasts in stainless steel tanks for over two weeks. After this, only the run off the young wine (the juice from the unpressed grape mass) is used, which is transferred to French oak barriques (25% new) for malolactic fermentation and aging. After approximately 16 months, the wine is blended and bottled without fining or filtering. This entire process complies completely with organic rules and regulations, but is not certified. The Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard is made from grapes originating from the Savoy vineyard. The Savoy Pinot Noir is bright ruby red in color. On the nose, aromas of cherries, pomegranate, orange peel, violets, undergrowth, tobacco, and a hint of black pepper. On the palate, notes of small red-black fruit, spices, and candied cherries, accompanied by a beautiful finish with refined tannins and subtle acidity.
Suckling concludes his review (97/100) with: "Extremely well done"
FUN FACT: The wine is stored in our climate-controlled Wine Warehouse, and if you come to pick up the wine, you will also receive a nice discount. We are located almost next to the main road with ample parking. Click here for the address.
Character
The wine
- 100%
Origin
Bottle
Wine features
Parker
The Wine Advocate
RP 93
Reviewed by:
Erin Brooks
Release Price:
NA
Drink Date:
2025 - 2035
The 2022 Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard comes from vines planted from 1991 to 1993. The nose is bursting with cranberry and rhubarb fruit, plus accents of licorice, mossy bark and mushroom. The medium-bodied palate is velvety and mouthwatering with alluringly crunchy fruit and a long, autumnal finish. 420 cases were made.
Published: Mar 29, 2024
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James Suckling
Score
97
Avg Price (ex-tax)
$ 124
Littorai Pinot Noir Mendocino Anderson Valley Savoy Vineyard 2022
Wednesday, Jun 12, 2024
Color
Red
Country
United States
Region
California
Vintage
2022
Plenty going on, with a floral, mushroom, plum and strawberry character. Medium- to full-bodied with clarity, focus and minerality, plus umami undertones. Bright and focused. Extremely well done. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
94
Drinking Window
2025 - 2032
From: Update - Sonoma and Neighbors 2022 & 2023: Opposites Attract (Jan 2025)
The 2022 Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard is a total charmer. Pliant, easygoing and beautifully open-knit, the 2022 will drink well right out of the gate. Vibrant red/purplish fruit, blood orange, spice and rose petal all grace this mid-weight, nuanced Anderson Valley Pinot. The Savoy is among the first wines I would open in this collection of 2022s.
- By Antonio Galloni on January 2025
My annual tasting at Littorai is always one of the highlights of the year because the wines encompass so many top vineyards in Sonoma County and Anderson Valley. Explorations of site. That’s what this range is all about.
Cold, foggy weather was a constant in the early part of 2023. Conditions were much more favorable in Anderson Valley, where growing degree days outpaced those of Sonoma through late May. “Between the Sonoma Coast and Anderson Valley, we had the most radically different start to the year as I have ever seen,” Ted Lemon noted. “It was the exact opposite of 2022.”
July saw high temperatures that were problematic in some spots, notably Savoy, where Lemon dropped a significant amount of the crop because of sunburn. Cluster sizing continued throughout August and September, leading to fruit being dropped as late as mid-September. The Pinots were picked starting on September 20 with Mays Canyon and Richardson Ranch. All the other Pinots were harvested in October, with two picks on November 1. For Chardonnay, harvest ran from October 10 to 25, almost a month later than 2022. The Pinots were vinified with a fair proportion of whole clusters. I tasted all the 2023s from tank, except for the Charles Heintz Chardonnay (which was still fermenting). Lemon opted to bottle a handful of Pinots early because of their softness. Those wines are reviewed from bottle.
There aren’t a lot of surprises with the bottled 2022s. The whites are soft and open-knit, as they were last year, while the Pinots are every bit as exciting as they were when I tasted them from barrel. Stem inclusion is in the 20% range for most Pinots, a bit less than in 2023. Stylistically, the 2022 are quite supple, while the 2023s are more delineated.
(92-95)
Drinking Window
2026 - 2044
From: 2022 Sonoma: A First Look (Jan 2024)
The 2022 Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard is a wine of unreal precision and class. What a fabulous way to start this tasting. Crushed red berry fruit, mint, blood orange, cinnamon and dried herbs lend notable nuance. More than anything else, I admire the wine's freshness and delineation. This is a terrific showing. At this stage, the 2022 offers a bit more energy than the 2021 tasted alongside it.
- By Antonio Galloni on January 2024
My tasting this year with Ted Lemon opened with a stunning set of 2022 Pinots that immediately made clear what was possible in this vintage. The 2022s are deep, layered and wonderfully vibrant, with fewer of the extremes that marked some of the 2021s. I was blown away by the purity of the fruit in these wines. I tasted all the 2022 Pinots from barrel, prior to any racking, about a month prior to bottling, always a great time to taste the new vintage as the wines are in such an expressive state. Readers will want to pay special attention to the Richardson Ranch Pinot, a new bottling from a young site in Annapolis that is quite promising. Most of the 2022 Pinots saw some stem inclusion, 20-33% in most cases (the Thieriot saw none), although whole cluster influence is not especially strong, at least at this stage in the wines’ evolution.
The 2022 Chardonnays come across as a bit light in body, but those wines have been racked to tank and are, therefore, harder to assess at this stage.
“I am pretty sure 2022 saw the coldest, driest spring since 1999,” Lemon explained. “We had tiny, bonsai-like vines because there was not enough nutrient uptake. We did have good rains between April 11 and 23, though. Flowering was uneven, with a lot of shot berries. Summer was mostly cool. At The Haven we only had two days above 90 until September 1. For us, for where we were, the heat was too late and too brief to affect things. Generally, we had more water, and canopies were healthier, whereas, in 2021, we simply ran out of water in many sites. Vineyards that were used to water really struggled in 2021.”
Speaking of the 2021s, I also had a chance to revisit the entire range from bottle. The Pinots are just as exciting as they were from barrel, while the Chardonnays confirm the strength and consistency of the year.
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After his adventures in Burgundy, owner Ted Lemon decided to go back to the United States and, in his own words, "wander around" looking for a suitable location for chardonnay and pinot noir. In 1993 he decided to go for it. Without the resources to immediately purchase a vineyard, this 'American dream' took a different turn. Not vineyards, but grapes - he bought them from several wineries in Anderson Valley and Sonoma Coast and made the wines at Robert Pecota in Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. Now, more than twenty years later, Ted and Heidi own about 7 hectares of vineyards and have long-term contracts with farmers for an additional 11 hectares of vines. Ted has been working on biodynamics since the early 2000s. The Littorai vineyards are not certified, but they work according to this philosophy. Littorai's wines are among the best in California. Ted Lemon makes pinot noir and chardonnay from single vineyards. Elegance, juiciness and concentration are key words in his cuvées. Wines with exceptional aging potential.
Deze 2022 Littorai Pinot Noir Savoy levert helder rood fruit van cranberry, kers en granaatappel met frisse, mondwaterende zuren en tonen van rhubarb, bosbodem, paddenstoel en een subtiele kruidigheid die voor elegantie en lengte zorgt. Door die frisse aciditeit en verfijnde tannines snijdt de wijn door het vet van gevogelte, wild en vette vis en accentueert hij umami en aardse smaken bij kazen, terwijl de paddenstoel- en bosaroma's vooral goed harmoniëren met rokerige of gebraden bereidingen; denk aan langzaam geroosterde eend met een kersensaus, gebraden fazant met paddenstoelenjus of zalm met een licht gerookte saus en bij kazen werken rijpe boerenkaas of een subtiele blauwe kaas uitstekend. Voor extra synergie kies bereidingswijzen die concentratie en umami versterken zoals confijten, langzaam braden of sauteren met champignons en een reductie van balsamico of rode wijn.
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