Winemaker Notes
The 2021 Sonoma Coast growing season started out cold and progressed into a mildly warm summer. Hot days and cold nights allowed for steady ripening throughout the season. The fall was free of any long and lingering heat waves, allowing the fruit to develop to optimal ripeness with intense fruit flavors. Overall, there were excellent growing conditions, resulting in beautifully balanced wines.
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
For pure luxurious enjoyment, this fruit- and spice-soaked wine is difficult to beat. It's a treat to sip the ripe red and black fruit flavors and savor the generous oak spices like cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. Ample, soft tannins lend a posh, mouthfilling texture.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Packs some rather solid dark cherry and blackberry fruit into its core, along with singed black tea and incense notes. Not shy with its toasty edge on the finish but offers ample fruit to soak it up. Drink now through 2028. 350 cases made.
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.”
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.