Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a great taste of the freshness of Sonoma without the sticker shock, showing freshly pressed red berries, vanilla and wet slate on the nose. It's light in density on the sip, so the flavors of cranberry, carnation, wet earth and brown spice sail effortlessly across the palate. Editors’ Choice
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Pinot Noir was also brought up in roughly 20-25% new French oak. This rounded, supple, seamless Pinot Noir has loads of charm and character as well as textbook notes of cherry and raspberry fruits, spice, and hints of forest floor and earth. With good acidity and a clean, balanced style, drink it over the coming 2-3 years.
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Wine Spectator
This lively Pinot offers crushed berry, gravel, loamy earth and light oak notes, showing a raspberry edge on the finish, which is long and clean. Drink now through 2022.
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.”
Home to a diverse array of smaller AVAs with varied microclimates and soil types, Sonoma County has something for every wine lover. Physically twice as large as Napa Valley, the region only produces about half the amount of wine but boasts both tremendous quality and variety. With its laid-back atmosphere and down-to-earth attitude, the wineries of Sonoma are appreciated by wine tourists for their friendliness and approachability. The entire county intends to become a 100% sustainable winegrowing region by 2019.
Sonoma County wines are produced with carefully selected grape varieties to reflect the best attributes of their sites—Dry Creek Valley’s consistent sunshine is ideal for Zinfandel, while the warm Alexander Valley is responsible for rich, voluptuous red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are important throughout the county, most notably in the cooler AVAs of Russian River, Sonoma Coast and Carneros. Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Syrah have also found a firm footing here.