Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is ethereal and intoxicating on the nose, offering a bouquet of wild rose and lavender that’s hard to resist. Dense, concentrated strawberry and pomegranate flavors give it a tart freshness on the palate that contrasts well against its innate power. There’s plenty of structure here for further aging.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir La Pommeraie is medium ruby-purple in color and scented of violets, dark chocolate and star anise with a core of Black Borest cake, raspberry pie and underbrush. Medium to full-bodied, soft, refreshing and delicious in its youth, it offers vibrant berry flavors and a lively backbone, finishing long and perfumed. 321 cases produced.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh, snappy, vivid black and wild berry give this a zesty mouthfeel; fine-grained tannins give the flavors traction. Drink now through 2025.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.