Winemaker Notes
Pair with lasagna, pork roast, or eggplant tapenade.
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Las Brisas is a hillside that faces southwest, receiving the sea breezes from the Pacific. This cool orientation and granite soils allow winemaker Viviana Navarrete to produce this fresh and vibrant pinot noir, the perfect wine to drink by the pool. This is bright in acidity, radiant in red cherry and strawberry flavors with a seductive mineral note in the background. Drink the first glass and you won’t stop.
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James Suckling
Ripe and dense with dried strawberry, cherry and terra-cotta. Full body, chewy and polished tannins. Spice, walnut and berry undertones. Juicy finish. Tiny bit dry tannins.
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.”
An officially recognized sub-zone in the southern part of the San Antonio Valley, the Leyda Valley was the original settlement of the wine pioneers who came to the area in the 1990s. They were in search of cooler and wetter growing conditions—as compared to more eastern, drier and often warmer locations.
Planting, which began only in the late 1990s, focused on Sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot noir and some limited spots for Syrah. The area continues to receive well-earned accolades for wines of these varieties.