Winemaker Notes
Dark and red-toned fruit, blood orange and cedar notes too. Stylish and drop dead delicious.
This has tomahawk ribeye for days written all over it – also eager pairing with grilled quail, game hen, or good ol’fashioned yard bird with cherry / wine reduction (pro tip, don’t add the wine, drink it while you wait for sauce to reduce).
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Occidental Ridge Vineyard is one of the deepest, most explosive wines in the range. It captures the very essence of the Sonoma Coast: the ability to deliver fruit intensity at relatively low sugars. Plush and silky, with tremendous concentration, the Occidental Ridge delivers on all fronts. What a wine!
-
James Suckling
Aromas of mushrooms, forest, wild blackberries, violets and Amarena cherries. The silky palate is dominated by black cherries, dusty cocoa and shiitake mushrooms. The tannins are chalky and persistent, with balanced minerality and acidity. A seductive and drinkable medium-bodied wine now, but it will continue to evolve. Drink or hold.
-
Wine Spectator
Delivers full-throttle mulberry and boysenberry puree notes that streak through, flanked by licorice snap and backed by flashes of dark earth, apple wood and graphite on the finish. Vivid. Best from 2026 through 2032.
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.