Winemaker Notes
Enjoy this elegant Pinot Noir now or savor for the next ten years.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Light in the glass, this bottling offers herbal and fresh aromas of pine needle as well as iron and sour cherry on the nose. The herbal tones prove even more delicious on the high-acid palate, where juniper and moss add depth to a snappy and fresh raspberry flavor.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Scott Family Estate Pinot Noir shows tremendous energy on the palate and into its finish. TASTING NOTES: This wine is fragrant and bright with aromas and flavors of red fruit, dried leaves, and savory spices. Enjoy it with a mildly-seasoned, oven-roasted Porchetta. (Tasted: May 25, 2021, 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.”
Named after the dramatic, seasonal river of rain and snowmelt that cuts through the upper elevations of the Santa Lucia Mountains, the Arroyo Seco AVA extends east from the resultant mountain gorge, and into the rural and warm Salinas Valley. During the growing season, cool and damp Pacific Ocean air penetrates the gorge and flows into the valley, creating a cool evening respite for vineyards after a hot summer day. This natural water-release has also created a subterranean aquifer, which helps set the foundation of the AVA's boundaries and supplies the vineyards with water.
Arroyo Seco was actually home to the first commercial vineyard in California, called Mission Ranch, which was owned and propogated by the Mirassou family in the 1960s.
Chardonnay is most widely grown here. But as one of Monterey’s warmer regions, Arroyo Seco enjoys the highest praise for its reds, namely Bordeaux blends.
Arroyo Seco is one of the oldest AVAs in California, its status granted in the early 1980s, and also remains one of its smallest.