Winemaker Notes
The 2020 Fess Parker Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir is a garnet color. Aromas of black cherry, sassafras, forest floor, baking spices, black tea, vanilla, and sandalwood. Flavors of black cherry, red plum, milk chocolate, cranberry, wild strawberry, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
With scents of smoke, clove and dark spices, this has the depth and the feel of amaro but none of the sweetness. The cherry flavors are dry and concentrated, plump but persistent, with an exotically spicy complement of tannins on the finish, firm enough for duck with a roast cherry gastrique.
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Wine Spectator
Juicy and open in feel, with a lightly singed red tea hint along the edges of a red and black cherry core. A hint of wood spice pervades on the finish. A crowd-pleaser.
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.