Winemaker Notes
This wine is a wonderful expression of what a cooler vintage at Jespersen Ranch can result in, with dark fruit flavors like raspberry and black cherry contrasted against floral, black tea and wet clay. This wine is ready to drink now but will continue to evolve over the next five years.
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Rounded raspberry and red plum aromas meet with anise and fennel frond on the juicy nose of this bottling. The palate lands cleanly and brisk, offering pomegranate, more raspberry and a splash of sage oil.
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.”
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.