Winemaker Notes
Sitting on the same ridgeline as Coastlands, Doc’s Ranch faces Southeast with a clear view of Pt. Reyes. It’s planted with a more modern layout than Coastlands, spacing the vines tightly as they careen down the steep hillside. Though younger than Coastlands, Doc’s warms up earlier in the day due to its orientation and it’s protected against the harsher westerly winds that hammer neighboring Coastlands. While still a shy yielding site, Doc’s has trended toward better fruit set than Coastlands with wines showing bracing acidity and an intense purity to the fruit. The Chardonnay is equally impressive, inspiring Ross to bottle a tiny production block designate that has become one of the favorite wines in the Cobb portfolio.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Pinot Noir Doc's Ranch Swan & Calera Selection is scented of red cherries and cranberries with tones of bitter citrus, tobacco leaves, dried flowers and Angostura bitters. Light-bodied, silty and incredibly fresh, its slim frame holds a surprising amount of pure, crunchy fruits, and it finishes with tremendous length and spicy layers. The Swan clone fruit included in this cuvée comes from vines planted in 1995, and the Calera clones were planted in 2011. It's another 2018 from the Cobb portfolio that offers both ageability and immediate appeal.
-
Wine & Spirits
This wine shows the relative ripeness of an east-facing ridge in the relative cool of Occidental. Ross Cobb farms on both sides, his own Coastlands Vineyard facing the ocean, while Doc’s Ranch, where this wine grows, is more protected from the winds off the coast. The ripeness is there when you open the bottle, in black-cherry density and cherry pit tannins. But however broad the strokes may seem at first, a day later, the wine is tightening up, as it continues to do for several days, gaining focus, its rose and high-toned sour-cherry notes deliciously fresh. Tannins enrich the finish, making the wine meaty enough for an herb-roasted saddle of veal.
-
Wine Spectator
Powerful and structured, with pure, focused minerality to the dried red currant, berry and cherry paste flavors. Sinewy midpalate, with a taut finish that resonates with fresh acidity and tannins as well as savory richness.
-
Decanter
Doc’s Ranch sits directly opposite Coastlands Vineyard, and yields a more powerful, broad-shouldered Pinot Noir than that of its neighbour. Of the two clone-specific releases from this site, the Swan & Calera Selection bottling is the more restrained, soft and floral. An inward nose of damp forest and moss leads to a perfectly balanced palate, showing a subtle grit and fine acid structure. Falls right in the middle of the Cobb Pinot Noir lineup.
The Sonoma Coast AVA is large in area but, not counting overlapping regions like Russian River Valley, only has a few thousand acres of grapevines—and it’s no wonder. Much of the region is rugged and not easily accessible. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean’s fog and cool breezes limits the varieties that can be cultivated, but it proves to be an ideal environment for high quality Pinot Noir.
Since fog is a frequent fact of life here, as are heavy marine layers that sometimes bring rain, the best vineyards are wisely planted above the fog line, on picturesque ridges that capture enough sun to provide even ripening. That, with the overnight drop in temperature that reliably preserves acidity, results in fine expressions of Pinot Noir that often receive tremendous critic and consumer praise alike, and are often in high demand.