Winemaker Notes
The 2022 Riva Ranch Vineyard Pinot Noir is a bright, buoyant, and altogether compelling example of the Arroyo Secco appellation. This year's bottling offers up youthful aromas of ripe black cherries and briary currents that are seamlessly combined with an integrated layer of toasty oak spice, showing hints of baked cinnamon and chestnut. Supple and rounded tannins combined with juicy acidity keep the wine balanced from front to back.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Following an entry of dazzling acidity accompanied by vibrant strawberry and cranberry with a dash of nutmeg, white pepper seasons a stony middle, urging rose petals out of the earth.
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James Suckling
Soft and savory-edged aromas of cherries, dried strawberries and spices. The palate is medium-bodied with refined tannins and bright acidity, giving notes of raspberries, forest floor and citrus peel. Delicate, with a drying finish.
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.”
Named after the dramatic, seasonal river of rain and snowmelt that cuts through the upper elevations of the Santa Lucia Mountains, the Arroyo Seco AVA extends east from the resultant mountain gorge, and into the rural and warm Salinas Valley. During the growing season, cool and damp Pacific Ocean air penetrates the gorge and flows into the valley, creating a cool evening respite for vineyards after a hot summer day. This natural water-release has also created a subterranean aquifer, which helps set the foundation of the AVA's boundaries and supplies the vineyards with water.
Arroyo Seco was actually home to the first commercial vineyard in California, called Mission Ranch, which was owned and propogated by the Mirassou family in the 1960s.
Chardonnay is most widely grown here. But as one of Monterey’s warmer regions, Arroyo Seco enjoys the highest praise for its reds, namely Bordeaux blends.
Arroyo Seco is one of the oldest AVAs in California, its status granted in the early 1980s, and also remains one of its smallest.