RAEN Home Field Vineyard Pinot Noir 2017
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James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker
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James Suckling
Impressive freshness and purity of fruit here, making for an enticing young pinot with an air of grace and great potential. Such compelling, earthy sous bois, spices and fresh red cherries. The palate has a captivatingly layered and seamless feel, building fresh red-cherry and deeper blueberry flavors. The rhythm and depth here are magnificent. Superb. Try from 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Made with 100% whole cluster, the 2017 Pinot Noir Home Field Vineyard is pale to medium ruby in the glass and offers up smoked meats, stone, violets, wet bark and citrus peel over a dense core of cranberry, pomegranate and rhubarb with dried black tea leaves notions. Light to medium-bodied, it explodes in the mouth with orange peel, earthy nuances and fantastically concentrated fruits, knit with a fine frame of lightly chalky tannins and juicy freshness, finishing very long and layered. This is drinking beautifully now but will age well in bottle.
Other Vintages
2016-
Robert
Parker -
James
Suckling
As winemakers and farmers, Carlo and Dante attribute a great deal of what they have learned to their grandfather Robert and father Tim, both whom influenced them from a young age.
Carlo and Dante’s father Tim was a pioneer for California Pinot Noir in the early 1970s and has always had a tremendous regard for the great wines of Burgundy. To this day his Pinot Noirs from the 1970s are showing incredibly well. Carlo and Dante credit their father’s passion for Pinot Noir as the early inspiration that got them excited at a young age.
Dante studied abroad in Switzerland at the Webster University in Genève as well at UC Davis in California. Carlo studied in France at the University of Aix-en-Provence and in Italy at the University of Milan. After their formal studies were complete Carlo and Dante continued their educational work with the winemaking team lead by their father Tim Mondavi at Robert Mondavi Winery and Opus One.
When Robert Mondavi Winery was sold in 2004, the brothers joined their father Tim, Aunt-Marcia and grandfather Robert as they founded Continuum in 2005.
In 2013 Carlo and Dante founded RAEN winery with the goal to produce world class Pinot Noir on the western hills of the Sonoma Coast. RAEN currently focuses on making three Pinot Noirs, from three unique sites on the Sonoma Coast.
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.”
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.