Winemaker Notes
Intense raspberry, wild strawberry, forest floor and earthy notes (graphite), very rich and complex with a leathery lingering finish. Will age gracefully for over a decade.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
More black fruits, smoked earth, baking spices, and earthy, saddle leather notes emerge from the 2017 Pinot Noir En Famille, which comes from a warmer, south-facing vineyard in the Fort Ross-Seaview region. This ripe, powerful, full-bodied Pinot Noir has an incredible texture and a huge core of fruit, yet it stays balanced, pure, and elegant, with plenty of tannic structure. Give bottles a year or two.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The En Famille Pinot Noir comes from a vineyard planted in 1990, right next door to the “Coteaux Nobles” vineyard in Fort Ross-Seaview vineyard. Medium ruby-purple colored, the 2017 Pinot Noir En Famille delivers quite serious scents of tobacco and new leather over a core of black raspberries, black cherries and kirsch with hints of dried herbs, tilled soil and red roses plus a waft of fallen leaves. Medium-bodied, the palate is fantastically fresh and delicately played, featuring grainy tannins to frame the energetic fruit, finishing long with a provocative ferrous note.
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.