Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Pinot Noir La Rinconada Vineyard, from a northwest-facing slope exposed to Pacific winds, was matured for 16 months in 27% new French oak. Pale ruby-purple, it offers alluring stony nuances that open to red and blue berries, dried citrus peel, Angostura bitters and dried flowers. The palate has a youthfully fresh, spicy character with an underpinning of broody nuances, and it finishes very long. With all that youthful energy, it feels a bit coiled, but it has the fine tannins, freshness and fruit intensity needed for 10 or more years in the cellar.
Rating: 95+ -
Vinous
The 2019 Pinot Noir La Rinconada is a glorious wine. Perfumed, silky and wonderfully pliant, the 2019 has so much to offer. Here, too, the purity of the flavors is absolutely compelling. Blood orange, bright red berry fruit, mint, rose petal and spice linger on the impossibly long, captivating finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Sweet cherry and strawberry fruits as well as plenty of spice and floral notes define the 2019 Pinot Noir La Rinconada Vineyard, which comes from a great vineyard on the southern side of the Sta. Rita Hills. Incredibly pure and elegant on the palate, it's medium-bodied, offers a touch of smoky minerality, opens up beautifully with time in the glass, and is another impeccably made wine from this estate.
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Wine Spectator
A light-bodied and open-knit style, with dried rose petal and red tea notes infusing a core of bitter cherry and damson plum fruit flavors. A mineral note blossoms through the finish, adding mouthwatering cut. A pretty, charming wine that's also sneaky long.
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.”
A superior source of California Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Sta. Rita Hills is the coolest, westernmost sub-region of the larger Santa Ynez Valley appellation within Santa Barbara County. This relatively new AVA is unquestionably one to keep an eye on.
The climate of Sta. Rita Hills is a natural match for Chardonnay and Pinot noir, thanks to the crisp ocean breezes and well-drained, limestone-rich calcareous soil. Here, grapes ripen just enough, while retaining brisk acidity and harmonious balance.