Winemaker Notes
This 2021 Classic Pinot Noir opens with deep aromas of florals and earth accented by vibrant notes of berries and cherries. The wine’s expansive palate features fruit-forward flavors of cranberries, fresh raspberries and bing cherries, followed up by hints of baking spice.
This food-friendly Pinot Noir is recommended with roast beef, rack of lamb, or wild Alaskan salmon.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A light, quite transparent hue in the glass, this bottling has rustic strawberry and cranberry aromas that are enhanced by hibiscus and toasted wood on the earthy nose. Red fruit flavors are prominent on the sip, where fresh acidity keeps it zipping into the finish.
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.”
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.