Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
A sensational Pinot that caresses the palate. Ultrarich and deeply flavored, with an easygoing and delicious range of ripe, spicy blackberry, black cherry, fresh earth and herbal spice and nutmeg flavors. Smooth, this delicate beauty dances on the palate, ending with a fragrant dried cherry and wilted rose petal scent.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Fragrant aromas of damp earth, fresh mushrooms, gravel, anise, plums, and cherries emerge from the 2001 Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge, which reveals this vineyard’s distinctive perfume and singular quality. An atypical notion of herbaceousness is also present.
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.