Winemaker Notes
This lush and expressive wine opens with aromas of black cherry, currant, anise, clove and toasty French oak. The cherry and currant notes are echoed on the mouth-filling palate, where silky tannin's provide polish and length to the flavors while carrying the wine to a long finish with hints of tarragon, thyme, espresso and dark chocolate.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
Lively and savory in forest spice with an herbal undercurrent, this full- bodied red is luxuriously lengthy. Wildly intriguing in fruity components of currant and cherry, it fin- ishes in toasted oak and chocolate-covered espresso bean.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Chappellet Grower Collection Dutton Ranch Pinot Noir is alluring and beautiful. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits excellent aromas and flavors red fruits, black fruits, and dried earth. Pair it with a rosemary-infused, roast leg of lamb. (Tasted: April 23, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Pinot Noir Dutton Ranch has a classic Russian River style in its mulled red and black fruits, cola, spice box, and violet-driven aromas and flavors. This carries to a medium-bodied, more structured wine that has ripe tannins, good mid-palate depth, and plenty of length. Rating: 91+
-
Wine Spectator
Crunchy red fruit and berry flavors are flanked by creamy savoriness. Mineral and Asian spice notes come in on the finish, with white pepper accents.
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.