Winemaker Notes
Enticing aromas of fresh blueberries, blackberries, and lilacs envelop the senses, while delicate notes of baking spice and vanilla integrate seamlessly.
Ripe blue fruit complements the precise balance of structure, layered acidity, and long, powerful finish.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Another pure, elegant wine from this estate, the 2019 Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast offers beautiful framboise and dark strawberry fruits to go with complex notes of forest floor, leafy herbs, spice, and damp earth. These carry to a medium to full-bodied Pinot Noir with a layered, seamless texture, terrific overall balance, and a great finish. If anything, it's a more approachable, softer wine than the Russian River Valley, although it too should easily keep for a decade. Both Pinot Noirs from this team are brilliant wines.
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James Suckling
Bright aromas of ripe red and black fruit with a lovely dried-herbaceous note. Full-bodied with fine, well-integrated tannins and a lot of elegance and lift. Such a pretty palate with fresh floral notes and juicy red fruit.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2019 Kosta Browne Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir is compact and well-balanced. TASTING NOTES: This wine delivers excellent aromas and flavors of dried leaves, red berries, and black fruit. Enjoy it with grilled lamb chops.
Founded in 1997, Kosta Browne is one of North America’s most revered wineries, recognized for making some of the world’s finest Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. Located in Sebastopol, Sonoma County, and guided by an acclaimed team that includes renowned Winemaker Julien Howsepian, Kosta Browne makes appellation and single-vineyard wines from the most coveted cool-climate vineyards across the Russian River Valley, Sonoma Coast, Anderson Valley, Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Lucia Highlands appellations. In addition to partnering with the finest growers in California, Kosta Browne has an estate program that features 170 acres of vineyards through ownership or long-term leases that includes the Cerise Vineyard in Anderson Valley, Keefer Vineyard in the Russian River Valley, and a prized section of the Gap’s Crown Vineyard on the Sonoma Coast. Kosta Browne has earned a place on Wine Spectator’s annual list of the world’s “Top 100 Wines” seven times since 2005, including “Wine of the Year” in 2011.
The Sonoma Coast AVA is large in area but, not counting overlapping regions like Russian River Valley, only has a few thousand acres of grapevines—and it’s no wonder. Much of the region is rugged and not easily accessible. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean’s fog and cool breezes limits the varieties that can be cultivated, but it proves to be an ideal environment for high quality Pinot Noir.
Since fog is a frequent fact of life here, as are heavy marine layers that sometimes bring rain, the best vineyards are wisely planted above the fog line, on picturesque ridges that capture enough sun to provide even ripening. That, with the overnight drop in temperature that reliably preserves acidity, results in fine expressions of Pinot Noir that often receive tremendous critic and consumer praise alike, and are often in high demand.