Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
From one of my favorite clones of Pinot Noir, the 2016 Pinot Noir Pommard Clone (17 months in 37% new French oak) is a big extrovert on the nose and offers a ripe, silky, elegant style to go with notes of raspberries, spring flowers, mint, and passion fruits. This is a decidedly elegant, floral expression of this clone (which normally produces a more gamey, earthy wine). With terrific overall balance, notable purity of fruit, and a great finish, it's going to keep for at least 5-7 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pinot Noir Pommard Clone reveals an attractive bouquet of smoky raspberries, blood orange, spice, undergrowth and plum preserve, followed by a medium to full-bodied palate that's quite supple and expansive, balanced by juicy acids and concluding with a sappy, delicately tannic finish.
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Wine & Spirits
This is the most integrated and finely ripe of the Fess Parker pinot noirs we tasted for this issue. There’s a lasting buzz of ocean cold and inland heat in this Santa Rita Hills pinot, a tight, floral fruit in harmony with the rich and generous texture. The oak feels present but remains gently in the background, adding a little toasty sweetness to complement the fine-grained sandy tannins. A match for grilled whole snapper.
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Wine Enthusiast
Very earthy on the front end, this clonal selection presents aromas of dark hibiscus, baked red fruits, pine forest floor, peppercorn and wild herbs. Tangy cranberry and sour cherry show on the sip, where a decent tension frames the palate.
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.