Winemaker Notes
Morning mist, rose petals, ripe red cherries, and muddled blackberries fill the bowl. This is followed by notes of black tea, thyme, coastal fern and forest floor that transport us to the redwoods surrounding this site. On the palate, there is a beautiful ballet between wild blackberries, bramble, and wild thyme that is seamlessly intertwined with warm exotic spice box, zesty orange pith and crushed gravel, all giving way to a seemingly everlasting finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A singular, distinctive wine that's incredibly layered, alive and spicy. So much minerality, freshness, steely acidity and complex fruit flavors. Red cherries, red plums, raspberries, violets, wild herbs, wet stones and chalk. Mouthwatering tension and a crunchy texture due to great acidity and a slight touch of reduction. Low in alcohol at 12.5%.
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Wine Spectator
This shows a brisk, almost chiseled feel right now, with a tensile spine of wet chalk and sea breeze that energizes the core of damson plum, bitter cherry and pomegranate fruit. The hibiscus note that reverberates through the pure, floral finish is pretty gorgeous too. Seriously long, with pinpoint acidity, this will cruise in the cellar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pinot Noir Freestone Occidental Bodega is a well of strawberry, raspberry and blackberry, plus nuances of grapefruit, tea leaves, cola and bitters. The light-bodied palate offers crunchy, perfumed flavors framed by dusty tannins and vibrant acidity, and it has a long, latent finish.
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.