Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
An extraordinary wine, with a wonderful upswelling of flavors, this features layered notes of complex raspberry, melted black licorice, clove and mineral. Unfolds gracefully and deliberately, gaining depth and velocity on the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2006 Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge possesses wonderful notes of boysenberries, blueberries, raspberries, damp forest and spring flowers. With full-bodied richness and complex aromatics, it seems more evolved and open-knit than the Three Sisters.
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.