Winemaker Notes
Red Car West Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir offers notes of Bing cherry, pomegranate, calera spice, and black tea.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
An elegant, rather ripe and very fruity wine that's medium-bodied and lush in texture. Generous strawberry, red-cherry, raspberry and cinnamon flavors are accented by notes of forest floor.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2024 Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast pours a transparent red hue with fruit now coming from newly purchased vineyard holdings. Ripe strawberries, spice, pomegranate, roses, bitter tea leaf, and dark stones all emerge. Medium-bodied, dry, fruity, elegant, and approachable, it has added depth and savory complexity.
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.