Winemaker Notes
#58 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2025
The Masut Estate Vineyard Pinot Noir shows intense red and dark fruits with hints of vanilla and anise, plush texture and spice. Seductive, silky and supple.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
The rich and opulent aromas of pomegranate, raspberry, cardamom, and notes of Tahitian vanilla oil are prominent on the nose. At the same time, the flavors on the palate say drink me now with my bountiful bright red berries, Bing cherries, and black tea, with racy acidity and lip-smacking tannins on the finish. Decant, Drink, or cellar until 2030. pair with roasted bacon-wrapped monkfish, purple cabbage, mushrooms.
Editors' Choice -
Wine Spectator
Offers expressive and fan-friendly black cherry and boysenberry compote flavors laced with black licorice and iris hints, all backed by a prominent roasted apple wood accent on the finish. For those who like the big fruit style. Best from 2026 through 2029.
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.”
Part of northern Mendocino County, the Eagle Peak appellation produces high quality Pinot noir.