Winemaker Notes
This wine is the unique expression of a carefully nurtured piece of land, made manifest in each bottle. We do without conventional pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, treating the soil as a living, life-giving system. Our winegrowing practices create special wines, while sustaining our environment, the place where we live, and the people who live here.
Critical Acclaim
All Vintages
Always Certified Organically Grown – At Paul Dolan vineyards all of our wines are certified organically grown by California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), a process that takes a minimum of three years. We believe that soil is a living, life giving system that is sensitive to chemicals and over cultivation. In organic farming, we do not use herbicides such as glyphosate or other synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
All of our wines are vegan; we do not use any animal based fining, a finishing process many wines go through. Like many of the best wines in the world we do add sulfites, never more than 100ppm, less than 1/3 the limit of conventional non-organically grown wines.
Paul Dolan Vineyards wines are the unique expressions of carefully nurtured vineyards in northern California’s Mendocino County. Our winegrowing practices create small lots of elegant wines, while sustaining our environment, the place where we live, and the people who live here.
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.
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.”