Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: Some Pinot Noir producers play it safe. Fort Ross Winery does not, and they are making some of California's most exciting wines. The 2013 Fort Ross Vineyard Estate Pinot Noir is a cutting-edge wine. TASTING NOTES: This wine is more than fruit. Its aromas and flavors of dried earth, savory spices, and generous black fruits should pair with lightly-seasoned, grilled lamb chops. (Tasted: March 7, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2013 Pinot Noir FRV Fort Ross Vineyard sports a ruby color as well as an open knit, ready-to-go bouquet of dried cherries, tobacco, menthol, and dried herbs. It's pretty, medium-bodied, rounded, and supple, with an evolved style ideal for drinking over the coming 4-5 years.
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.”
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.