Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2015 Pinot Noir Sta. Rita Hills also over delivers. Coming from the Rancho La Viña vineyard and brought up in French oak, it gives up a beautiful bouquet of black cherries, currants, and cassis, with background licorice and spice developing with time in the glass. With medium to full-bodied richness, terrific purity of fruit, and an elegant, seamless profile, it will drink nicely for upwards of a decade or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir Sta. Rita Hills is medium ruby-purple colored with a red currant, red cherries and black raspberries-scented nose with cinnamon stick and cardamom nuances. Medium to full-bodied, it's soft, fruity and fresh in the mouth with a long finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Cinnamon, star anise and strawberry aromas show on the nose of this appellation blend. The palate carries flavors of dark pomegranate and black raspberry, bound together with a tightly wound acidity and layered with mossy earth elements.
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Wine Spectator
Ripe and full of concentrated dark plum, cherry and dark currant flavors that are plush and well-spiced. Chocolate and cream notes fill the long finish. Drink now through 2022.
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 superior source of California Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Sta. Rita Hills is the coolest, westernmost sub-region of the larger Santa Ynez Valley appellation within Santa Barbara County. This relatively new AVA is unquestionably one to keep an eye on.
The climate of Sta. Rita Hills is a natural match for Chardonnay and Pinot noir, thanks to the crisp ocean breezes and well-drained, limestone-rich calcareous soil. Here, grapes ripen just enough, while retaining brisk acidity and harmonious balance.