Winemaker Notes
Pair with grilled mushrooms and grilled fatty fish such as salmon or tuna.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is focused and vivid with dried strawberry and lemon rind aromas and flavors. Medium body, fine tannins and a bright acid backbone.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The first of three Pinot Noirs I tasted from Leyda, all from the 2016 vintage, the 2016 Single Vineyard Las Brisas Pinot Noir is a bright, translucent ruby colored expression of the grape, with a meaty nose and a perfumed personality, fragrant and expressive. The palate is quite gentle, with unnoticeable tannins and integrated acidity. In this case, I prefer the nose to the palate. 66,600 bottles. It was bottled in January 2018.
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.