Winemaker Notes
Planted in 1975 and featuring a northern exposure, Reed is always the last vineyard harvested on Mt. Harlan each year, yielding a wine with lovely energy and enticing aromas of cracked black pepper, ripe cherry and red raspberry. On the palate, soft, supple tannins add depth and nuance to flavors of strawberry, cherry cola and clove as they glide to a long, elegant finish.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
This red is grippy, with singed earth, stem and briar notes running through its core of steeped mulberry and blackberry fruit, which unfurls slowly. The finish is fresh in feel, with a mouthwatering iron hint.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Reed Vineyard is a particularly meaty, spice-driven expression from Calera. It opens with cured meat, white pepper, black fruit and graphite aromas that introduce a svelte, polished and mineral-drenched palate. The finish is one of the roster's more intensely focused and bracing, featuring pronounced acidity and admirably precise tannins that manage to avoid austerity. Rating: 94+
-
Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir Reed Vineyard is notably more forward and fruit-driven within the context of the 2021 Calera Pinots, opening with sappy blackberry, dark red raspberry and macerated cherry notes. Accents of toasted sugar, violet and sweet florals build as the Reed delves into pithy grippiness toward the close. Beautifully finessed and particularly fresh.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: Since its first vintage in 1978, the Calera Reed Vineyard Pinot Noir has always been one of the winery's most sought-after wines. The 2021 vintage continues to add to its legendary status. This wine brings aromas and flavors of ripe blackberries, dried earthy notes, and a hint of briar to the fore. Try it with seasoned, grilled pork kebabs. (Tasted: May 23, 2024, San Francisco, CA)
-
Wine Enthusiast
Dark berry aromas are awash in smoke and an array of mountain herbs on the nose of this bottling. Candied boysenberry flavors are cut by pepper and a leathery texture on the palate, which will smooth out with time.
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.