Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: With every passing vintage, I am becoming more of a fan of the Sonoma Coast Pinot Noirs. The 2014 Fort Ross Reserve ranks as one of the best I have enjoyed recently. TASTING NOTES: This wine is flush with alluring fruit and persistent in its focus and crisp aftertaste. Its aromas and flavors or racy red fruit and a touch blackberry should pair it superbly with a garlic-infused roast leg of lamb. (Tasted: March 24, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple colored, the 2014 Pinot Noir Reserve offers notes of mossy tree bar, tar and charcoal over cranberries and raspberry leaves with a waft of roses. Elegant, light to medium-bodied, very fine and with nice ripe tannins, it finishes long with an herbal lift.
Rating: 91+ -
Wine Enthusiast
This opens in a thick concentration of dark cherry, plum and undeniable cola spice, the midpalate built around firm integrated tannins and oak. Complementary aspects of forest, black tea and coastal sea spray add to the complexity and overall appeal.
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.