Pali Wine Co Shea Vineyard Pinot Noir 2012
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Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
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Wine Spectator
Firm in texture, this lithe wine offers refined cherry and spice flavors on a sleek frame, lingering as the finish ramps up the intensity. Best from 2016 through 2020.
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Wine Enthusiast
Pali's relationship with Shea vineyard grapes goes back at least eight vintages. Done in a lighter style, this new release spent 10 months in 25% new oak. It's pretty, with beguiling flavors of raspberry and red plum, and a vein of minerally acidity that runs through the core. It’s approachable now, but should age well through 2020.
Pali is a Lompoc-based winery, on the western edge of the iconic Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County, committed to producing ultra-high-quality wines at fair prices without a shred of snobbery. Pali employs environmentally friendly wine grape growing, and non-invasive winemaking practices. Founded in 2005 with the intent to produce Burgundy-inspired wines from California’s Central Coast, Pali Wine Co. now consists of three brands with distinct focuses. The original Pali brand focuses on premium Pinot Noir and Chardonnay sourced primarily from Pali’s own Santa Rita Hills and Sonoma vineyards.
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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.