Winemaker Notes
A pale ruby red color belies a darker fruit expression of plum and cassis with shiitake mushroom on the nose. The complex palate layers red and black fruits, rhubarb, earthy components, with a floral quality and marked acidity and subtle, elegant tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir Romanini Vineyard "The Engineer" is pale ruby-purple colored and intensely scented of crushed cranberries, wild strawberries and pomegranate with touches of rhubarb, tilled soil and truffles. Light-bodied with incredible intensity and perfume, it features very soft, fine-grained tannins and wonderful freshness, finishing long and minerally.
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.