Black Hills Nota Bene 2022 is a stunner

Photo: Winemaker Ross Wise MW

Black Hills Estate Winery releases its flagship Nota Bene 2022 with two dinners in mid-June, celebrating what arguably is the best Nota Bene ever made. The good news is that the winery made 4,262 cases in 2022, one of the Okanagan’s finest vintages. The sad news is that no Nota Bene will be made this fall and probably not for a few more vintages after that. “Vineyard redevelopment is our big focus for 2024,” writes Ross Wise MW, the winemaker and general manager at Black Hills. “Unfortunately, we have been heavily impacted by the cold events of the last two winters and we are replanting our Black Sage vineyards. As tough as this decision was, it is also an opportunity to build a resilient and productive vineyard f0r the future, more in tune with the current climate we are faced with.”

He continues: “It is also an opportunity to shape future vintages of Nota Bene (and all of our wines) through decisions such as trellis design, row orientation, variety, clone and rootstock selections, and our future farming practices. This is the next stage in the evolution of Nota Bene.” Black Hills has the resources to replant because the winery is owned by Andrew Peller Ltd., which acquired it in 2017 in a three-winery purchase for $95 million. (The other wineries in that transaction were Tinhorn Creek Estate Winery and Gray Monk Estate Winery.)

Nota Bene was one of the wines in my book, Icon: Flagship Wines from British Columbia’s Best Wineries. Here is an excerpt:

Nota bene suggests that a person should “take notice”. That is exactly what happened with the very first vintage of Nota Bene in 1999. The acclaim from critics and consumers gave it a cult status that the wine has enjoyed ever since. The founders of Black Hills were two couples who had left city jobs in 1996 to plant 36,000 vines, mostly Bordeaux red varieties, in a vineyard on Black Sage Road. Senka Tennant, one of the quartet, was tasked with making the wine. She made the first three vintages of Nota Bene with advice from Rusty Figgins, a Washington state winemaker who had made numerous Bordeaux-style blends at prestigious Leonetti Cellars.

To allow one of the founding couples to retire, Black Hills was sold in late 2007 to a group of investors called Vinequest Wine Partners Limited Partnership. Many of the investors were Nota Bene collectors who now had an even more compelling reason to buy the wine. Senka Tennant’s final Nota Bene was the 2007 vintage, and she has been succeeded in the cellar by Graham Pierce. Vinequest has since expanded Black Hills with the purchase of a neighbouring vineyard in 2011 on which, in the following year, a $1 million wine shop was built. The winery at last had a tasting room commensurate with Nota Bene’s prestige.

Black Hills has the ability to produce more than 5,500 cases from its two vineyards. The volume of Nota Bene, however, is capped at 3,500 to 4,000 cases. The wine’s quality is consistent; it is always made with three estate-grown Bordeaux varieties. It was aged in oak for a year until 2014, when the winery extended barrel-aging to 16 months. The current oak regime is 80% French, 20% American; one-third of the barrels are new, one-third are a year old, and the remaining third are two years old.

Ross Wise took over as winemaker in 2019, bringing fresh ideas and techniques to elevate Nota Bene to another level. “In 2020 we began our transition to organic farming and removed the last American oak barrel from the cellar,” he writes. “In 2021, we continued to fine tune our cooperage, investing in large format oak and concrete vessels to help us retain freshness in warmer vintages.” Consequently, the 2021 Nota Bene, which is from a very hot vintage, is a delicious red, full of bright fruit.

“The 2022 growing season could not have been more of a contrast to 2021,” Ross writes. “After a cold and wet spring and mild temperatures throughout the summer, we entered veraison three weeks later than average. Thankfully, a warm, sunny, frost-free October allowed our later ripening varieties to reach their full potential, and our harvest wrapped up just as the first snow was falling in early November.” In 2022 Black Hills purchased a basket press for its red wine program. “This has had a profound impact on the quality of our pressed wine,” Ross writes. “With a slow and gentle press cycle, the basket press helps us achieve richness and texture in our wines without any coarseness in the tannin profile.”

In his note on the 2022 Nota Bene, Ross does not look ahead to the 2023 Nota Bene. I have confirmed that he made one but the quantity is expected to be reduced. That warm late fall of 2022 was followed by a sharp cold in late November/early December that caused significant bud and vine loss. Overall Okanagan wine production was reduced by close to 50% in the 2023 vintage. It is encouraging that Andrew Peller Ltd. has the resolve to replant vineyards that have produced an icon wine for two decades; and that will resume producing an icon in a few years. Here is a note on the 2022 Nota Bene.

Black Hills Nota Bene 2022 ($70 for 4,262 cases). The blend is 46% Merlot, 36% Cabernet Sauvignon and 18% Cabernet Franc. The wine was fermented with wild yeast (another innovation by Ross Wise) and aged 18 months in French oak barriques and puncheons (47% new). The wine begins with aromas of black currant and dark cherry mingled with spice and subtle hints of oak. On the palate, the wine is rich and generous with flavours of red currant, dark cherry and plum. A portion of the wine was allowed to age a few days in the opened bottle; it became richer and more polished, indicating how well the wine will age. 95.