Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard is lovely, wafting from the glass with a complex bouquet of red berries, subtle tobacco leaf, cocoa, spice and sweet soil that reveals more and more nuance with aeration. On the palate, the wine is medium-bodied, supple and sappy, with fine-grained tannins on the finish and good concentration. One gets the sense that bottle age will be rewarded. This struck me as California's answer to a Volnay from Domaine Lafarge.
Rating: 92+ -
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The Verdad Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard Pinot Noir exhibits unencumbered qualities of the grape variety. TASTING NOTES: This wine is generous, yet stylish, and refined. Its distinct aromas and flavors of savory spices and black fruit should pair well with grilled lamb chops. (Tasted: August 19, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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.”
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.