Winemaker Notes
The 2013 Blue Slide Ridge Pinot Noir has a nose of lilac and lifted blue fruit with dusty essences. The palate is precise, clean and bright with dark plum and black cherry flavors.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From the blue slate soils of the Sonoma Coast, the 2013 Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge is dominated by Dijon clones 115, and to a lesser extent, 667 and 777. Exhibiting great ripeness, a deep ruby/purple color and oodles of black cherries and black raspberries, the wine is complex, deep, rich, and very concentrated. This wine sees a lot of new oak, but it is beautifully sucked up by the wine’s lavish concentration and rich, multi-dimensional style. Drink it over the next decade or more
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.