Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Blueberry, blackberry, lavender ,and ripe strawberry. Stunning aromas. Full body, with super fine tannins that are compressed and extremely long. It goes on for minutes. Even better in 2020.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2015 Kosta Browne Gap's Crown Vineyard Pinot Noir is a nifty wine. TASTING NOTES: This wine slides nicely on the palate and finishes with a bright aftertaste. Its brightly-focused aromas and flavors of ripe red fruits flow effortlessly. Pair it with a pan-fried, thick pork chop. (Tasted: July 10, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
Rich and spicy, with a dense core of extracted dark berry, mocha, spice, cedary oak and loamy earth notes. Packs a lot of flavor into a style that will benefit from short-term cellaring. Drink now through 2023.
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.