Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with roasted bone marrow or duck breast with a cherry reduction
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Mostly from the Russian River Valley, the 2016 Pinot Noir Le Duc Noir sees a touch of whole cluster and was fermented in open top fermenters. It's aged 6 months in barrel, with roughly 20% new. It's another terrific value and gives up outstanding notes of black cherries, spice, forest floor, and hints of licorice. Beautifully textured, layered, and balanced, it's a smoking value that readers should snatch up.
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Tasting Panel
Tobacco, earth, and chocolate cherry are indulgent ambassadors of this aristocratic red. Deep notes of espresso bean, anise, and graphite compliment blackberry, black tea, and black cherry. This is barrel-aged sur lie for seven months in 100% French oak.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple colored, the 2016 Le Duc Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir offers up a gorgeous perfume of red roses, cinnamon stick and chocolate-covered cherries with hints of Provence herbs, anise and forest floor. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is filled with generous red berry and spice flavors, textured by soft tannins and finishing with an invigorating herbal lift.
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.