Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Beautifully crafted, rich and deeply flavored, this offers an impressive mix of finesse and refinement. Exhibits ripe, graceful notes of plum, anise, licorice, fresh earth, cedar and blackberry pie. Glides along on the finish. Drink now through 2020. 270 cases made.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2010 Pinot Noir Ritchie Vineyard is an attractive, mid-weight wine laced with sweet red cherries, flowers, spices and French oak. It shows lovely mid-palate sweetness and inner perfume in an attractive, mid-weight style best suited for near-term drinking. Today the Ritchie comes across as just a bit compact and one-dimensional next to the other 2010 Pinots. With air, though, the wine blossoms nicely. Freshly cut roses and spices waft from the delicate, feminine finish. It will be fascinating to follow this precise, crystalline beauty over the coming years. Anticipated maturity: 2014-2020.
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.