Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2015 Pinot Noir Bodega Headlands is the richest, deepest, and most concentrated in the lineup. It offers slightly more black fruit as well as hints of graphite, cassis, flowers, and forest floor/leafy herbs. It still shows the more fresh and lively style of the Sonoma Coast, with brilliant acidity, yet it hits the palate with an incredible amount of beautiful fruit, plenty of tannins, and a layered, complex style that keeps you coming back to the glass. As with the other releases here, it needs a year or two of bottle age.
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.