Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A full and juicy wine with lots of dried strawberry, tobacco, cedar, and hints of dried meat on the nose and palate. Decadent and rich. So delicious now.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine offers astounding quality for the price, a juicy expression of fruit and spice with a depth of firm resolved tannin, lively acidity and layers of black cherry and cola. Approachable and delicious, it hits the mark on every level being light bodied and refreshingly balanced while complex. Editors' Choice.
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Wine & Spirits
This is a new project focusing on more affordable wines from Fort Ross Vineyards, where Jeff Pisoni makes the wines for Lester and Linda Schwartz, a South African couple who planted the vineyard in 1994. An earthy, coastal pinot, this has an elastic tension to the structure that reminded some of our tasters of certain Williams Selyem wines from the far coast. It’s black and bitter when first opened, needing air for the tannins to recede and for the refined, fresh flavors to come to the fore. The tannins continue to give it shape and enhance its power; this is a wine to cellar for a few years, or to decant for grilled duck breast.
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.