Winemaker Notes
Aromas of red cherry, raspberry, red plum, cola, baking spices, forest floor, cigar box and vanilla. Flavors of bing cherry, red currant, black plum, baker's chocolate, vanilla, nutmeg, and grilled sage.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Brought up in neutral four-year-old barrels and sourced all from Ashley's Vineyard in the Sta. Rita Hills, the 2017 Pinot Noir Older Barrels has a complex, old-school nose of mulled cherries and black fruits, underbrush, and smoked earth. Rich, medium to full-bodied, and beautifully balanced, with fine tannins, I'd happily drink bottles over the coming 7-8 years.
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Wine Enthusiast
This bottling offers heavily layered aromas of red cherry, wild thyme and sage. It hits the palate with heft, delivering boysenberry, bay leaf and peppercorn flavors to make for a full expression of the grape.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir Older Barrels gives up notes of dried black tea leaves, granite, woodsmoke, dried tobacco leaves, violet and forest floor with a core of ripe red and blue fruits. Medium-bodied, it features wonderfully concentrated, spiced fruits in the mouth with ripe, grainy tannins and great juicy acidity, finishing long and layered.
Rating: 92+
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Wine Spectator
An elegant red, featuring fine-grained red fruit flavors that are filled with lithe minerality and spiciness. Crunchy acidity ties all the elements together. Finishes with touches of cocoa powder. Drink now through 2024.
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Wine & Spirits
With its forward strawberry fruit and cinnamon-stick oak spice, this wine is irresistibly Californian in its sunny, fruit-forward disposition. It’s simple and crowd-pleasing, for a pork loin dinner.
Established in 1989, Fess Parker Winery is a multi-generational family owned and operated winery that has a rich heritage in Santa Barbara County. Fess Parker produces premium, small-lot, vineyard designated Burgundian varietals from the Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley as well as Rhône varietals from their organically farmed, SIP Certified estate vineyard.
Outstanding fruit sources, including some of the finest vineyards in the county, coupled with skilled winemaking, led by Blair Fox, form the foundation for the winery’s success. Now three generations in, the Fess Parker Family is proud to carry on Fess’s legacy of wine heritage and hospitality in Santa Barbara.
Fess Parker Winery was proud to be named a Top 100 Winery in the World by Wine & Spirits Magazine in both 2022 and 2023.
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.