Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple colored, the 2016 Pinot Noir CIX Vineyard bursts forth with baked cherries, red currant jelly and mulberries with touches of cinnamon stick, violets, baking spices and potpourri. Full-bodied, opulent and wonderfully spicy in the mouth, it has a solid frame of firm and grainy tannins with a seamless acid line and a very long, decadent finish. This wine was bottled in June 2017.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Pinot Noir CIX Estate is a darker, earthier effort that has a kiss of Côte de Nuit in its black cherry, savory herbs, scorched earth, and forest floor aromas and flavors. It’s powerful and concentrated, yet also silky and elegant, with fine, fine tannin on the finish. Drink it anytime over the coming decade or more.
The Sonoma Coast AVA is large in area but, not counting overlapping regions like Russian River Valley, only has a few thousand acres of grapevines—and it’s no wonder. Much of the region is rugged and not easily accessible. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean’s fog and cool breezes limits the varieties that can be cultivated, but it proves to be an ideal environment for high quality Pinot Noir.
Since fog is a frequent fact of life here, as are heavy marine layers that sometimes bring rain, the best vineyards are wisely planted above the fog line, on picturesque ridges that capture enough sun to provide even ripening. That, with the overnight drop in temperature that reliably preserves acidity, results in fine expressions of Pinot Noir that often receive tremendous critic and consumer praise alike, and are often in high demand.