Winemaker Notes
Enjoy the full bodied acidity with your favorite heavy proteins, as this is a more structured wine. It's also delicious with mushrooms stuffed with goat cheese, grilled vegetables, flatbread with caramelized shallots, goat cheese and chanterelles. Desserts include blueberry compote or tart or bittersweet chocolate. Great aging potential 5-8 years.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Pinot Noir specialist Norm Yost hits the varietal’s geeky purists with a straight clonal take, pulling just Clone 2A to deliver this wine. The nose is lighter, with cranberry, leather, butter, vanilla and root beer aromas. Meanwhile the palate is stronger—soft but a tad tannic on entry, with licorice and charred pepper steak on the finish. Equally elegant and forceful.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Medium brick, red color; fine, subtle and nicely developing aroma, excellent depth; medium bodied, fine edge on the palate; dry, nice acidity, well balanced; mineral, red fruit and creamy wood in the flavors, evolving now, medium finish, earth in the aftertaste. Drinking quite well now, will continue to improve over the next few years. (Best Served: 2014-2018)
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.