Winemaker Notes
Anna’s Block consistently delivers brilliant red crunchy fruits, showcasing notes of fresh cranberry with a savory component of iron, dried herb, and deep earth notes. The concentrated, ripe tannins combined with fresh acidity surround the dense fruit, leaving you wanting another sip. The wine is complex and balanced.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
The nose on this bottling is fresh, focused, intense and ripe. Black cherry, strawberry and dark mint aromas are seductive and attention-snagging. The palate lands with juicy flavors of strawberry and Bing cherry, as cracked white and green peppercorn spices mix with fresh herbs to hammer home the deliciously detailed experience.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Anna's Block was vinified with 50% whole clusters and has detailed aromas of cranberry, blackberry, bitter orange, tobacco, oolong tea leaves and wildflowers. The medium-bodied palate is chalky and vibrant with a layered core of earth-laced fruit and a long, pure finish.
-
Wine & Spirits
Wild and boisterous, the whole cluster aromatics in this stylish pinot are seductive and powerful, with explosive scents of olive, raspberry, black tea and mushroom. The flavors remain floral and savory in the extreme, a wine that feels bucolic in its youthful energy. For the cellar.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2021 Pinot Noir Anna's Block comes from the Melville estate vineyard, planted in 1997 by Brent and Chad Melville. It's even lighter hued, with a translucent ruby hue followed by a pretty, more herbal, focused Pinot Noir offering tart cherry and framboise fruit, medium body, a focused, tight mouthfeel, and outstanding length. It's getting close to the lean category yet opens up nicely with air. I'd give bottles another 2-3 years of bottle age, when I suspect it will have gained a touch of generosity and breadth.
Rating: 92+
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.”
A superior source of California Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Sta. Rita Hills is the coolest, westernmost sub-region of the larger Santa Ynez Valley appellation within Santa Barbara County. This relatively new AVA is unquestionably one to keep an eye on.
The climate of Sta. Rita Hills is a natural match for Chardonnay and Pinot noir, thanks to the crisp ocean breezes and well-drained, limestone-rich calcareous soil. Here, grapes ripen just enough, while retaining brisk acidity and harmonious balance.