Winemaker Notes
Established in 2007 by the visonaries responsible for Napa Valley's Far Niente winery, EnRoute is the culmination of a more than 30-year passion for Pinot Noir. Their journey convinced them that the Russian River Valley offers the best opportunity to craft the focused, textured, yet graceful, Pinot Noir wines they wanted to create. In the search for vineyards to comprise this blend, the team discovered a few individual lots that stand out for their particular character. Some vineyards produce intensely structured wines with bold aromas, while others are more delicate with silkier tannins and subtle fruit and earth notes.
This wine is a unique expression of the Widdoes Vineyard in the extremely cool Green Valley AVA. Fermented with whole clusters, native yeast and aged in large format barrels, it expresses beautiful dark fruits, herbes de Provence, wet stone and naturalacidity. It's consistently one of EnRoute's favorite lots in the cellar each year, and now for the first and only time it’s bottled on its own.
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.”
Situated on the foggier and colder western edge of the Russian River Valley, almost abutting the Sonoma Coast appellation, Green Valley is one of California’s most reputable Chardonnay and Pinot noir producing regions. It is also a wonderful source of sparkling wines made from these varieties.
Goldridge soils abound throughout the Green Valley appellation. This fine, dark, sandy loam and fractured sandstone is derived from the remains of ancient inland seabeds dating back three to five million years. It is valuable for high quality grape growing because of its excellent drainage and low fertility.