Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The appellation 2015 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley is a head turner and boasts fabulous notes of black cherries, wild strawberries, smoked earth, and forest floor. It’s another classic, medium-bodied, perfectly balanced effort from this estate that doesn’t put a foot wrong. It too will keep for a decade or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley is medium ruby-purple colored with quite a broody/earthy nose to begin, with notions of baked cherries and black raspberries followed up by truffles, underbrush, mossy bark and ceps plus a waft of tilled soil. Medium to full-bodied, the palate gives a taut frame of grainy tannins and seamless freshness, supporting the generous earth-laced fruit and finishing long.
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Wine Enthusiast
Sourced from Bucher Vineyard on Westside Road and Platt Vineyard in the Sonoma Coast, this wine is light-bodied and fresh on the palate, offering baked raspberry, cardamom, clove and forest flavors.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.