Winemaker Notes
After the more restrained 2016 vintage, the 2017 Gloria Estate is back to the fuller-bodied style typical of the Russian River Valley. With deep, dark color, this blackberry- and vanilla-scented Pinot has a lush mouthfeel, balanced beautifully by high acidity. The 2017 is already drinking well just six months after bottling, but with its larger frame and impeccable balance, it should last right through the 2020s.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Excellent depth and complexity bring this concentrated wine to a high level of deliciousness. It offers deep, brooding aromas of black cherry, clove and forest floor followed by mouthfilling and focused flavors of black cherry and sour cherry that linger on the finish.
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Wine & Spirits
Ken and Akiko Freeman planted their estate vineyard in 2006, mostly to heritage clones of pinot noir. It’s a steep eight-acre site 10 miles from the Pacific, and the ocean cool seems to have worked its way into this wine. It’s juicy and clean, with sour cherry flavors and a coastal forest-floor scent—ferns, pine, cedar and fresh air.
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.”
Situated on the foggier and colder western edge of the Russian River Valley, almost abutting the Sonoma Coast appellation, Green Valley is one of California’s most reputable Chardonnay and Pinot noir producing regions. It is also a wonderful source of sparkling wines made from these varieties.
Goldridge soils abound throughout the Green Valley appellation. This fine, dark, sandy loam and fractured sandstone is derived from the remains of ancient inland seabeds dating back three to five million years. It is valuable for high quality grape growing because of its excellent drainage and low fertility.