Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Red cherry, ripe strawberry and fresh mint on the nose. Full-bodied with well-integrated tannins and a good amount of weight on the palate. Flavorful and long with notes of dried flowers and crushed red and black fruit. Very tasty.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from a handful of sites and brought up in 10% new French oak, the 2018 Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast is a beautiful wine from this producer, and it's easily the largest production release with 500 cases produced. Spiced black cherries, darker framboise, flowery incense, and baking spice notes all emerge from the glass, and it's medium-bodied, fresh, and lively on the palate, yet with deceptive richness and length. Give it a year in bottle and enjoy through 2028. It might surprise and evolve even longer.
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Wine & Spirits
Big and dense enough that when first poured, this wine seems outside the realm of pinot noir. Then air brings it back into line, its richness an amalgamation of raspberry and perfumed peach flavors, its soft tannins yielding the savory bitterness of peach pits. Those tannins are cushioned by all the fruit, the wine integrated and secure in its generosity.
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.