Winemaker Notes
Graham Family Vineyard Russian River delivers generous black raspberry, and cranberry with notes of earth and spice. Elegant, balanced, lush and focused. Mouthful is ample and plush gaining depth with a lingering velvety finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir Graham Family Vineyard offers concentrated aromas of cranberry sauce, crushed cherries, gravel dust, cola and underbrush with touches of Angostura bitters, orange peel and tar. It’s medium-bodied and silky, offering intense, earth-laced fruits, a gently grainy frame and a long, juicy finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Pinot Noir Graham Family Vineyard is similar to the 2016 with its ripe cherry, strawberry, and floral core, yet it's slightly fresher and more lively, with a beautifully layered, elegant texture. With good acidity, ripe tannins, it's already drinking beautifully yet should easily keep for 7-8 years. This cuvée was brought up for 15 months in 52% new French oak.
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Wine Enthusiast
Full bodied and robustly velvety in style, this offers a richness of vanilla and baking spice around core elements of rhubarb, strawberry and orange peel. The flavors come together around supple integrated tannin and oak, with a deft thread of acidity throughout.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.