Winemaker Notes
Red Car Heaven & Earth Pinot Noir offers notes of baking spice, wild blackberry, and pomegranate.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This ethereal red offers tension and texture in equal measure with grip and grit. The savory, earthiness is met by a nice sprinkling of baking spice and black tea, with a fruity landscape of strawberry and cherry that last through integrated oak and supple tannin.
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James Suckling
Lovely floral aromas of fresh roses and violets, crushed black cherries and sage. Medium-bodied with fine, well-integrated tannins and good weight and depth. Pleasant salinity and minerality to the palate, which compliment and lift up the ripe fruit. Melted chocolate and espresso come through.
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Wine Spectator
Shows expressive red tea, blood orange, damson plum and dried anise notes that weave together, with juicy acidity carrying the finish before bringing you back for more.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Pinot Noir Heaven & Earth is a beautiful, almost Burgundian Pinot Noir with a medium ruby color as well as pretty aromatics of bright black cherries, cranberries, bouquet garni, and sappy flowers. It certainly plays in the fresher, more elegant end of the spectrum, yet it has good depth of fruit, medium-bodied richness, and a pretty spine of acidity that carries to the finish. Enjoy this elegant, nicely balanced Pinot Noir over the coming 7-8 years.
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.”
Home to a diverse array of smaller AVAs with varied microclimates and soil types, Sonoma County has something for every wine lover. Physically twice as large as Napa Valley, the region only produces about half the amount of wine but boasts both tremendous quality and variety. With its laid-back atmosphere and down-to-earth attitude, the wineries of Sonoma are appreciated by wine tourists for their friendliness and approachability. The entire county intends to become a 100% sustainable winegrowing region by 2019.
Sonoma County wines are produced with carefully selected grape varieties to reflect the best attributes of their sites—Dry Creek Valley’s consistent sunshine is ideal for Zinfandel, while the warm Alexander Valley is responsible for rich, voluptuous red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are important throughout the county, most notably in the cooler AVAs of Russian River, Sonoma Coast and Carneros. Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Syrah have also found a firm footing here.