Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Sappy herbs, flowers, forest floor, sour cherries, and raspberry notes all emerge from the 2017 Pinot Noir Reed Vineyard. This lively, elegant Pinot Noir has nicely integrated acidity, beautiful balance, and a great finish.
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Wine & Spirits
Reed, along with Selleck, contains Calera’s oldest pinot vines, planted in 1975 at 2,200 feet of elevation on a north-facing slope. That northern aspect may account for this wine’s gentle savor—the tobacco, the Korean pepper flake, the hint of clove and leather. The flavors are spicy and sour, the wine’s acidity rendering the texture supple and suave, like the first wisps of fog striking the hill on a summer afternoon in coastal California. Open one bottle now, but cellar the others.
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Wine Enthusiast
There's a stunning purity of intense Bing cherry fruit that hits the nose first on this bottling, and then the region's expected waves of wild sage, dank forest herbs and spicy peppercorn converge as well. Black sage oil makes for a sappy palate, which surrounds a cranberry and pomegranate core.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby in the glass, the 2017 Pinot Noir Reed Vineyard, aged 17 months in 30% new French oak, has a very pretty nose of prosciutto, pepper, autumn leaves, rooibos tea leaves, dust and graphite with wild blackberries and earthy notions in the undercurrent. The palate is light to medium-bodied, intense and layered with finely grained tannins and juicy freshness, finishing layered.
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.”
At elevations reaching well over 2,000 feet, the Mt. Harlan AVA in the Gabilan Range is an anomaly among its surrounding Central Coast appellations. Recognizing the splendor of the area and its ideal limestone-rich soils, Josh Jensen chose Mt. Harlan as the home of his Calera Wine Company in the 1970s. Awarded his own AVA in 1990, Calera is the only commercial winery in the appellation.