Winemaker Notes
Flush with bright red fruit, the 2019 County Line Pinot Noir opens with dried strawberry, fresh raspberry, and ripe Bing cherry. This brambly fruit entry is charmingly offset by earthen forest floor undertones and alluring notes of crushed rose petal and bergamot tea. The mouthfeel is casually sophisticated – softly textured yet invigorated by balanced acidity and expressive tannins that delicately linger.
From mushroom risotto to pasta Bolognese to grilled swordfish, the potential pairings for this accessible and expressive Pinot seem endless.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Eric Sussman and his team at Radio-Coteau make this wine from organically grown grapes, aging it in neutral oak barrels. Its lush cherry richness has some fruit-leather spice at first, giving way to an earthiness that hovers over the fruit with each breath. Salty and bright, this is a great value in coastal pinot.
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.