Winemaker Notes
On the nose deeply fruity, with blueberry and blackberry pie over a subtle backdrop of honeycombs and French oak. On the palate instantly irresistible with mouthwatering tension evolving to a balanced, focused finish.
Professional Ratings
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The Somm Journal
From the maritime climate of the Petaluma Gap AVA, this celebrated vineyard in the southern part of the Sonoma Coast offers the advantages of high elevation, afternoon winds, and a lingering fog that allows for slow sugar development. Angular and spicy, with cocoa-dusted tannins, this juicy and delicious wine has a zippy mouthfeel that’s ready for a steady flow of blueberry, sage, and coffee.
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James Suckling
Lively aromas of blue and ripe red fruit, plums and toasted rosemary. Full-bodied and so expansive on the palate. Well-integrated tannins carry plenty of flavor with so much depth and steady intensity. Well balanced and remaining fresh, despite the lush fruit.
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Wine Spectator
Big, with cooking spice accents to burnished dark plum and dried blackberry flavors that are supported by fresh acidity. Dark chocolate and toffee linger on finish, which features medium-grained tannins.
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Wine & Spirits
Scents of dark-roast coffee and touches of volatility enhance this wine’s depths of black-cherry flavor. It’s juicy and spicy, a rich pinot that ends with the ripeness of black-raspberry jam. For roast duck.
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.