Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Leading off the Pinot Noirs, the 2016 Pinot Noir Wayfarer Vineyard was completely destemmed and spent 15 months in 45% new French oak. It offers a bright framboise, cranberry, exotic flower, and spice-driven bouquet that carries to a medium-bodied, silky Pinot Noir that has everything in all the right places. Showing more floral, spice, and forest floor with time in the glass, incredible tannin quality, and a great finish, it’s certainly on par with the single parcel/clone driven releases.
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Wine Enthusiast
This estate-grown beauty is succulent and supple, with a tense body of bright wild strawberry, crushed rock, dried lavender and Asian spice. Robustly rich and deeply layered in flavor and texture, it finishes in a gorgeous dabble of white pepper.
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James Suckling
This offers exceptional detail in terms of aromas and flavors with a ripe array of red cherries, framed in seductively spicy oak and fresh, youthful, meaty notes. There’s a long, plush and succulent feel to the palate with elegant, fine-grained tannins, delivered in silky and regal style. Impressive precision. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pinot Noir Wayfarer Vineyard is medium ruby-purple with lovely red cherries, redcurrants and pomegranate notes with touches of dried herbs and forest floor. The palate is medium to full-bodied with tons of bright fruit layers and a fine-grained texture, finishing long and juicy.
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Wine Spectator
Features a distinctive edge of tangy red berry, raspberry and cranberry flavors. Refined and elegant, even as the fine-grained tannins weigh in on the aftertaste. Drink now through 2024.
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.