Winemaker Notes
Step 2: Swish the cherry and strawberry flavors across your tongue
Step 3: Pause momentarily to contemplate quitting your real life to move to a vineyard and stomp grapes for a living
Step 4: Find a bigger glass
How it drinks: well-structured with perfect balance. Cherry, raspberry, and strawberry fruit flavors on the nose and palate.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Tart cherry, high-toned cranberry, and striking acidity ignite the palate. Spiced cinnamon, cedar, and clove show this Pinot Noir’s savory side; sweet tobacco and an underlying earthiness augment its complex nature.
Internationally recognized for gorgeous, pure fruit combined with great elegance, California Pinot noir thrives among the state’s cooler, coastal zones. Characterized by eclectic flavors and aromas of strawberry, black cherry, plum and potpourri with notes of forest floor, mushroom or black tea, the best California Pinot noir boast a supple texture and good acidity, giving them the ability to improve with age.
Credited with the beginning of Pinot noir’s glory in California, two growers, Joe Rochioli and Joseph Swan in the late 1960s independently planted Pinot noir vineyards in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County. Today Sonoma County remains the leading producer of Pinot noir in the state, and Pinot noir is the leading red grape in the county, achieving its highest potential, in the Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast.
Other coastal appellations where Pinot noir flourishes include Carneros, Anderson Valley and most of the Central Coast.