I am loathe to dump on any winery in these troubling economic times, but I would be remiss if I failed to share my disappointment with a recent vintage of wines from a winery I’ve enthusiastically endorsed in the past.
I take no pleasure in reporting that I recently tasted a number of offerings of the 2006 vintage from Beckmen Vineyards and found them well below the standard I’ve come to expect from this Santa Ynez Valley winery that specializes in Rhone varietals.
The wines were uniformly overripe and the alcohols were high — above 15 percent — but more than that they lacked the cohesion and elegance of previous vintages, and in some cases were flawed by bitter green tannins despite an abundance of ripe fruit characteristics.
I was so surprised and disappointed that I placed a call to the winery’s media representative to ask, in a nutshell, “what happened?”
The answer was reasonable. Something to the effect that the vintage was challenging and winemaker Steve Beckmen was forced to decide between green fruit and overripe fruit. I realize this is a tricky decision and those who nail it usually have decades of experience with the same vineyard.
The Beckmen family has been working its exceptional Purisima Mountain estate since 1994, so in the scheme of things the hostorical record does not extend over several decades. In my opinion, they timed their picking decision badly in ’06.
OK, that happens. What I don’t understand is why the Beckmens moved forward anyway and produced all of their special designation wines (mostly Syrahs from various blocks of the vast Purisima Mountain vineyard) at the usual high prices when the wines clearly represent less than the best that Beckmen can do.
On the bright side, Steve Beckmen is quite pleased with his 2007 vintage. Good. I’ll stay away from the ’06 Beckmens and wait for the ’07s to come around.
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