Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Brought up in 65% new French oak (there was also a touch of whole clusters used), the 2016 Pinot Noir Gaps Crown comes from one of my favorite sites on the Sonoma Coast. It's deeply colored and offers a ripe, powerful style in its black raspberries, cassis, ground herb, and graphite aromas and flavors. It's concentrated, deep, and beautifully textured, and has plenty of oomph on the palate without ever seeming excessive or over the top.
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Wine Enthusiast
This gorgeous wine is earthy in minty sage and wild strawberry, the secondary flavors a twist of black tea and cherry compote. Thick with an acid backbone, it finds balance within its substantial power, leading to a juicy lengthy finish of Asian spice.
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James Suckling
A rich and densely structured pinot with plenty of firm, fine tannins, carrying darker cherry, plum and chocolate flavors in an unwavering, linear style. Try from 2020.
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 vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.