Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Pinot Noir Magic Moments Hyde Vineyard is an incredible wine, powerful but featherweight. It has a pale to medium ruby-purple color with delicate scents of lavender, tea leaves, saline and crushed red berries, opening to deeper tones of fragrant earth and licorice with time in the glass. In the mouth, it's smooth as silk with bright, crunchy, spicy fruits, firm but fine and detailed and finishing with a classic peacock's tail of expanding flavors. Rating: 97+
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Jeb Dunnuck
All destemmed and brought up in plenty of new oak (80%), the ruby/plum-hued 2018 Magic Moments Hyde Vineyard offers up a ripe, perfumed bouquet of Bing cherry, blood orange, violets, black tea, and forest floor. This silky, medium to full-bodied effort brings plenty of sweet fruit, yet it stays light, elegant, and flawlessly balanced.
As early as the 1970s Carneros became known as a source of terrific Pinot Noir, and was one of the first California regions to gain such a reputation. The combination of sunny days, cooling fog and thin clay soils are tailor-made for the variety. Another factor in Pinot Noir’s prominent place here is vintners’ willingness to experiment widely. The history of the grape in Carneros is marked by continuous research into clonal variations, viticultural techniques and site selection. Careful evaluation over time has revealed a signature flavor profile as well. Complex aromas and flavors of cherry, red berry, spice, earth and cola appear time and again in Carneros Pinot Noir. To this day the appellation remains one of California’s standard bearers for the variety.