Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Cool yet ripe strawberries, together with crushed spices, such as cloves and cardamom. Then mushroom and bark. Full-bodied with a solid structure and layers of firm tannins. Great finish. But needs three to six years to soften.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir La Côte is an energetic wine with plenty of aging potential. In the last couple of years, production from this nine-acre vineyard was halved when the team realized wine quality was better from the top portion of the vineyard, where it is shaly and better protected. Fruit from the bottom half of the vineyard is now allotted to the Pinot Noir Estate. Medium ruby and aromatically layered, it offers scents of pomegranate, cranberries and blackberries with nuances of graphite, lavender and amaro. Medium-bodied, its concentrated fruits are supported by powdery tannins and bright bursts of acidity, and it finishes with detailed accents of bitters and botanicals.
Rating: 96+ -
Wine Enthusiast
Extreme cool-climate qualities show on the nose of this bottling, including asphalt, olive tapenade and truckloads of tumbleweed, with dark-cherry elements adding a fruit tone. Flavors of Pasilla chile in tomato broth show on the utterly unique palate, where cranberry sauce and cracked rainbow peppercorn add to the attention-grabbing complexity.
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Wine Spectator
Ripe and focused, with a core steeled for cellaring by a racy, chalky frame, which is nicely embedded throughout. Delivers light red tea, incense, sanguine and savory details that unfurl slowly through the finish. Long and precise. Best from 2024 through 2034.
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.”
A superior source of California Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Sta. Rita Hills is the coolest, westernmost sub-region of the larger Santa Ynez Valley appellation within Santa Barbara County. This relatively new AVA is unquestionably one to keep an eye on.
The climate of Sta. Rita Hills is a natural match for Chardonnay and Pinot noir, thanks to the crisp ocean breezes and well-drained, limestone-rich calcareous soil. Here, grapes ripen just enough, while retaining brisk acidity and harmonious balance.