Winemaker Notes
Integral to this wine each vintage, there are prevalent notes of rose petals and black tea. The wine is richly textural with wild strawberry, burnt orange pith, exotic spice box, and tastes-of-the-forest on the initial palate, becoming a rich, dark berry on the mid-palate. Bodega has a wonderfully long and persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The purity of fruit in this is wonderful defined here with crushed strawberry and rose petal aromas and flavors. Full-bodied with creamy and fine tannins and an iodine and light umami character. Flavorful finish. Sliced oranges. Citrus. Drink after 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby in color, the 2019 Pinot Noir Freestone Bodega Occidental is a gorgeous wine, with pure, ever-changing aromas and excellent balance. Red cherries and cranberries are accented by layers of conifer, pipe tobacco, iron, orange peel and tea leaf aromas. The medium-bodied palate offers bright acidity and silty tannins to support layer after layer of spicy fruits, and it finishes with exceptional detail and nuance. It comes from a small, 1.8-acre parcel where vines are planted on steep slopes that must be farmed by hand.
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Wine Spectator
A piercing, fresh style, with a savory tilt to the damson plum, blood orange and cherry pit notes. Stays tightly focused through the brisk-edged and well-detailed finish. A wine that relies on precision rather than bombast. Drink now
As winemakers and farmers, Carlo and Dante attribute a great deal of what they have learned to their grandfather Robert and father Tim, both whom influenced them from a young age.
Carlo and Dante’s father Tim was a pioneer for California Pinot Noir in the early 1970s and has always had a tremendous regard for the great wines of Burgundy. To this day his Pinot Noirs from the 1970s are showing incredibly well. Carlo and Dante credit their father’s passion for Pinot Noir as the early inspiration that got them excited at a young age.
Dante studied abroad in Switzerland at the Webster University in Genève as well at UC Davis in California. Carlo studied in France at the University of Aix-en-Provence and in Italy at the University of Milan. After their formal studies were complete Carlo and Dante continued their educational work with the winemaking team lead by their father Tim Mondavi at Robert Mondavi Winery and Opus One.
When Robert Mondavi Winery was sold in 2004, the brothers joined their father Tim, Aunt-Marcia and grandfather Robert as they founded Continuum in 2005.
In 2013 Carlo and Dante founded RAEN winery with the goal to produce world class Pinot Noir on the western hills of the Sonoma Coast. RAEN currently focuses on making three Pinot Noirs, from three unique sites on the Sonoma Coast.
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.