Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: When I thought it was clear, another producer appears on my horizon with some impressive wines. The 2016 Adobe Road Pinot Noir has a lot to offer, and it's all good! TASTING NOTES: This wine is dramatic as it combines power with elegance. Its aromas and flavors of black fruit, anise, and its shading of oak put it in competition with some of Burgundy's top Premier Crus. (Tasted: August 9, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pinot Noir is pale to medium ruby-purple colored and gives up wonderfully spicy notions of Chinese five spice and Sichuan pepper with a core of baked cherries and black raspberries plus a waft of violets. Medium to full-bodied with a firm backbone of grainy tannins and seamless freshness, it fills the mouth with spiced red berry layers and finishes with great persistence.
Adobe Road Winery produces small lot wines from premier family-owned vineyards across Sonoma County and Napa Valley. Through collaboration and meticulous attention to detail, our handcrafted wines reflect the unique characteristics of each vineyard site in which they are grown.
Owners Kevin and Debra Buckler founded the winery in 2002, with a unique tie to the world of professional motorsports. As a championship race car driver, Kevin's passion and drive earned him over 100 professional racing victories. With that same passion and drive, Kevin is now dedicated to crafting exceptional wines that represent the pinnacle of quality from the most esteemed vineyards in Sonoma and Napa.
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.”
Defined more by altitude than geographical outline, the Sonoma Mountain appellation occupies elevations between 400 and 1,200 feet on the northern and eastern slopes of the actual Sonoma Mountain and is part of the greater Sonoma Valley appellation. The mountain reaches 2,400 feet; its hills separate the cooling winds of Petaluma Gap from the Sonoma Valley.
On a cooler western flank, Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Syrah enjoy a great deal of success. Vineyards on its warmer, eastern side, interspersed with heavily forested areas, tend to include Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, and Syrah. Given its complexity of topography and mesoclimates, Sonoma Mountain excels with a wide range of grape varieties.