Red Car Heaven & Earth Pinot Noir 2012
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A mouthfilling, spicy, seamless Pinot from the cool outreaches of the Sonoma Coast, this offers a bouquet and taste of clove and rose petal as well as juicy layers of cherry fruit. It’s a wine that’s easy to enjoy on its own, or pair with a gorgeous slab of fresh salmon.
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Red Car was founded in 2000 when Mark Estrin, Carroll Kemp and Richard Crowell produced 50 cases of wine from a single ton of Syrah grapes in a Culver City garage. In a nod to their Los Angeles roots, the new venture was named Red Car after the trolley line that ferried riders across the region for the first half of the twentieth century.
In 2004, they purchased 125 acres of land and began developing vineyards in the wild coastal ridges north of Sonoma County’s Bodega Bay, a region now known as the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA. Here, the interplay of warm sunshine, cool Pacific breezes and sandstone soils could yield the age-worthy wines of structure and complexity that had captured their imagination.
Today, under the direction of viticulturist, Greg Adams, and winemaker, Tanner Scheer, Red Car farms five dramatic vineyards including Heaven & Earth, Zephyr Farms, Mohrhardt Ridge, Hagan, and The Estate. This rugged terrain's coastal influence—where the Pacific fog filters in daily through giant redwoods until warm sunshine sends it back out to the sea—provides perfect growing conditions for their hallmark style: perfumed aromatics, bright fruit, crisp texture and uplifting acidity. Red Car is passionately committed to producing wines of purity and focus that express the authentic varietal character and terroir of each unique coastal vineyard site. At the core, Red Car is a small, independent farming operation committed to conservation and sustainability.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.