Winemaker Notes
#19 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2023
Inviting aromas of black plum, sweet leather, and clean minerality greet you upon opening. The entry is slightly sweet with present tannins, along with integrated Oak spice, fig preserve, and black cherry. The multi-layered palate evolves through the long finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Loaded, with gorgeous succulent, lush boysenberry, mulberry and açaí berry fruit seamlessly inlaid with singed apple wood, anise and fruitcake details. Gains additional beguilement from a late flash of potpourri and black tea.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Bondi Home Ranch has deep scents of red cherry, mushroom and forest floor—it's still youthfully dense. The medium-bodied palate is chalky and seamless and boasts expansive, spicy fruit, generous earthy accents and a layered, lifted finish.
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Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir Bondi Home Ranch Vineyard is one of the riper wines in the range. Sweet dark cherry, spice, leather, vanillin and sweet spice are front and center. The 2021 offers plenty of raciness, if not quite the textural richness that has been the norm here for years. This site in Green Valley is marked by an exceptionally long growing season.
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.”
Situated on the foggier and colder western edge of the Russian River Valley, almost abutting the Sonoma Coast appellation, Green Valley is one of California’s most reputable Chardonnay and Pinot noir producing regions. It is also a wonderful source of sparkling wines made from these varieties.
Goldridge soils abound throughout the Green Valley appellation. This fine, dark, sandy loam and fractured sandstone is derived from the remains of ancient inland seabeds dating back three to five million years. It is valuable for high quality grape growing because of its excellent drainage and low fertility.