Winemaker Notes
The 2023 Bishop’s Peak Pinot Noir is versatile enough to pair with a variety of dishes: vegetable pad see ew, grilled salmon or hoison duck bao buns.
Vegan-Friendly
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
As the Talley family’s entrylevel brand, this is a very exciting indication of what to expect in the 2023 wines. This bottling offers crunchy raspberry, red currant, white pepper, sansho pepper and dewy sage on the dynamic nose. The palate is awash in a zippy acidity that enlivens the thyme, bay leaf and raspberry flavors.
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir is an absolute delight. Aromatic and light on its feet, it offers up generous crushed red berry fruit, orange peel, mint and hints of spice. This mid-weight, vibrant Pinot offers tons of San Luis Obispo Coast character—it’s a great value, too.
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.”
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.