Winemaker Notes
Flavors run deep and show a mix of red and black fruit with brushes of tilled soil and a bit of game meat. The wine is seamless and deep with flavors that impact the palate sweetly.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Comptche Ridge is quite a distinctive wine, just as the other wines in this range are. Salty, irony and intensely structured, it has the characteristic fruit clarity that runs through all of these wines. Tingly acids lift the pomegranate-tinged finish, leaving the palate reeling with a really attractive dustiness.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pinot Noir Comptche Ridge is scented of blueberry, blackberry, charcuterie, juniper and lilac. The medium-bodied palate is bursting with concentrated, floral flavors. It’s framed by chalky tannins and mouthwatering acidity and has a long, perfumed 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.”
A large and diverse appellation within California’s North Coast AVA, Mendocino is home to several smaller sub-regions—most notably the Anderson Valley. This scenic region, with rolling hills covered in redwood forests as well as vineyards, is one of the world’s top producers of certified organically-grown grapes. Due to wide geographical and climatic variation, a vast array of wine styles can be found here.