Winemaker Notes
Deep purple. Intense aromas of ripe plum, mulberries, and dark fruits with just a hint of toasty, earthy notes underneath. This is an intense little number with ripe mulberry and plum flavors. The mid palate is round and concentrated with the fruit balanced by earthy, savory, and spicy notes, suggesting this is a wine that will develop nicely over the coming years. It has loads of supple, finely managed tannins and the finish is long, spicy, and delicious.
Pair with roasted duck breast with green beans with a hazelnut and orange dressing or try a lamb en croute with butternut gnocchi, purple carrot, and black garlic.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Bold, with English breakfast tea, dense tannins and dried sage flavors in balance with licorice-laced plum and black cherry flavors. A smoky thread of palo santo lingers on the finish, where the tannins firm up. Drink now through 2030.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2019 Jules Taylor Pinot Noir sails on the palate with excellent freshness, vitality, and fruit. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits bright and tangy aromas and flavors of red fruit, chalk, and mineral notes. Enjoy it with grilled salmon fillets. (Tasted: November 13, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.