Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
All brawn at first, this comes from a vineyard planted on a volcanic hill in the windswept Petaluma Gap. It needs a vigorous decanting or a few more years in bottle to integrate its oak spice and dark concentration, but it’s clean and layered at the core. With air the oak yields to the conifer-scented power of the fruit, acidity spinning the wine’s richness into layers of detail, bringing out a foggy scent and giving the wine a crisp edge. (700 cases)
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Wine Enthusiast
Light and clear in color, this impish wine needs time to grow up in the bottle, its profile momentarily giving way almost entirely to savory Asian five-spice and a sharp acidity that should interweave together expertly over the years. Vibrant and complex, the fruit is sultry and dusted in earth. Cellar Selection.
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.