Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with full flavored fish, pork chops, and chicken. Also try with crispy kale and stir fried vegetables. All you really need is dark, bittersweet chocolate!
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
An offering meant to toast all manner of celebrations, this wine wows, blending 78% Pinot Noir with 22% Chardonnay in a near-perfect union. Dry and beautifully floral, it opens in a bouquet of marzipan, peach and honey. The mousse is fine, while supporting acidity lends a lemon peel and grapefruit lift. The memory imprinted on the palate will linger long after all the toasts to the happy couple—or whatever else you're celebrating—have been made.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Romance and wine: two subjects that strike close to the heart. For incurable romantics, it is all about the courtship, the setting and the final proposal. For serious oenophiles, it is about the wine itself and how well it was put together. The 2012 Iron Horse Wedding Cuvée is a sparkling wine that has the stuff to meld these two concepts together. While the wine's seemingly easy texture places it in the extra dry category, it actually belongs in the Blanc de Noirs Brut grouping as its slightly pink hue suggests. While the wine is beautifully dry, it is far from too acidic, making a perfect wedding day wine. Here is a toast to a wine that is both romantic and serious. Drinking perfectly now. (Tasted: July 29, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
Delicate rose petal and strawberry aromas lure you in for a taste, leading to graceful notes of orange zest, crisp apple, flinty mineral and blanched almond. The finish offers racy acidity. Drink now. 4,000 cases made.
Iron Horse is best known for its Sparkling Wines, which have been served at the White House since 1985, beginning with the historic U.S.-Russian Summit Meetings ending the Cold War, at the White House Millennium celebrations ushering in the new century, and at the White House dinner honoring the Pope.
Their Chardonnay is considered a signature wine for the cool, foggy Green Valley region. Pinot Noir is the winery's rising star wine.
Iron Horse has been named an American icon in a reference book published by Random House called "Icons of the American Market Place". Listed in alphabetical order, Iron Horse takes its place between iPod and Jack Daniel’s, validating Iron Horse’s reputation as a brand backed by pride, passion and quality.
The Iron Horse name came from a train that cut across the property in the 1890s. The logo, the rampant horse on a weather vane, came from a 19th century weathervane found while clearing away the rubble to build the winery.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
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.