Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
A rush of sugared beet, pomegranate, and vanilla-soaked raspberry mingles with a touch of salinity on entry, while a soil compo- nent reflects the super-cool climate of the appellation. Power and elegance coexist in this red, which finishes with graphite, peony, basil, and exotic incense.
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James Suckling
Flowers, pure fruit, sandalwood, and perfume. Medium body, with such lively fruit character. So bright. Spice. Purity of fruit. So much going on here. All about the energy and liveliness here.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Pinot Noir West Sonoma Coast has a gorgeous perfume of wild raspberries, fresh flowers, anise, and fresh forest herbs. Medium-bodied, with a lovely structure, it’s long on the palate and has a fresh feel throughout. It’s a beautiful wine, and I would be thrilled to have a case sitting in my cellar for the next several years. Drink 2024-2036.
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Wine Enthusiast
There's lovely freshness to the cherry and raspberry aromas on the nose, as if they're being macerated in the glass. The palate brings all of that juiciness, along with black tea, fresh loam and cedar flavors on a minute-plus finish.
Editors' Choice -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir West Sonoma Coast is bursting with pomegranate and briar fruit, and it has loads of fine accents including allspice, licorice, sagebrush, tea leaves and blood orange. The light-bodied palate features nuanced, layered fruit. It has gently chalky tannins, bright acidity and a long finish laced with spice. This boasts a lot of complexity for such a lifted, ethereal frame.
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Wine Spectator
Ripe and juicy, featuring a solid core of mulberry and loganberry fruit laced with light briar, anise and black tea accents. Shows zip on the toasty finish, with good stuffing for the vintage. Drink now through 2027. 1,600 cases made.
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.