Place Of Changing Winds Annus Horribilis 2020

Everyone will have a story to tell about the year 2020. Some will be far worse than others. A year already challenging enough for the team at Place of Changing Winds was made even worse when a terrible frost wiped out something like three-quarters of their Pinot Noir and 100% of their Chardonnay. In Rob’s words, “In the context of a global pandemic, I don’t want to overstate things, but it hurt us badly. The 2019 harvest had been our first vintage release, and we had been so excited to see what 2020 would bring. Mother Nature broke our hearts (and almost broke the bank).”

On the spring night of October 1st, with budburst just beginning, the temperature plummeted to below -3°C at about midnight, and it stayed there for six hours. It was a freak frost. Despite the team’s best efforts—running the frost fans and lighting fires—pretty much all the buds and any young growth was destroyed, and with them went the crop. In the end, the battered POCW Pinot vines produced a minuscule 50 grams of fruit per vine on average, from 28,000 productive vines. The result was barely enough fruit to produce 100 dozen bottles of wine.

So, there is only a single Place of Changing Winds Pinot Noir released from the 2020 vintage. While the name of the wine, Annus Horribilis—the Latin for a year of disaster or misfortune—describes the season well, the wine is anything but. Instead, we think it is rather beautiful. But it’s a very particular style that this vineyard may never make again. Therefore, Rob and Remi have decided to bottle the wine under a one-off label. If you like pretty, perfumed yet structured Pinots, then you should enjoy this. It’s fine-boned, light bodied, powdery, very delicate and yet savoury. It will likely age well, as the balance is there. But it will also drink well young. Of course, you can drink it when you want to. If you open a bottle now, or at five or 10 years, and you love it then, well, we suppose there is no reason to wait any longer.