Going Through, Not Around
TASTING NOTES: “In the glass, Alma Rosa’s 2022 North Slope Pinot Noir, which was sourced almost entirely from its own estate El Jabali Vineyard, alongside a small amount of carefully selected partner fruit sourced from top growers along the southern corridor of the Sta. Rita Hills, is a strikingly deep, rich ruby hue. On the nose, the wine shows ripe red fruit, freshly picked flowers, citrus peel, lavender and mint. Reflective of the excellent and “classic” 2022 growing season, this wine, with its bright red fruit flavors, lively acidity, distinctive oceanic salinity and firm yet elegant tannins, exemplifies why the Sta. Rita Hills is such a special and distinctive place to cultivate Pinot Noir.” (AbV 14.6%)
VARIETALS: Pinot Noir
BARRELS: 30% new French oak
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: El Jabali Vineyard, the estate at the heart of this wine, takes its name from the Spanish word for wild boar.
El jabali.
There is arguably no animal in all of human mythology, folklore, and general cultural imagination that punches so wildly above its weight. The wild boar has been: the beast that killed Adonis (Greek mythology), the creature Hercules had to capture as his fourth labor (also Greek mythology — they were really into boars), a sacred animal to the Norse god Freyr, the heraldic symbol of dozens of noble families across medieval Europe, the animal that inspired an entire category of Italian pasta sauce (cinghiale ragù, which you have almost certainly seen on a menu and possibly mispronounced), and the main antagonist of Princess Mononoke. That is an absurd résumé for a pig that got out of hand.
The Japanese, it should be noted, have the boar in their zodiac — the twelfth sign, representing courage and sincerity, though also a tendency to charge headlong into things without thinking. Which tracks. You do not look at a wild boar and think: here is an animal that deliberates. You think: here is an animal that has decided. There’s something almost admirable about that level of commitment. The boar does not hedge. The boar does not reconsider its route. The boar is going through the thing, not around it, and it will be somewhere else entirely by the time you’ve finished forming an opinion about it.
