Winemaker Notes
This Pinot Noir offers aromas of cherry and strawberry with exotic spices and hints of rose petal. The texture is silky smooth with refined tension.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir has a pale ruby-purple color and gives up notes of minted cherries, crushed red plums and raspberry leaves with wafts of black tea and unsmoked cigars plus a touch of wild thyme. Medium-bodied, the palate provides an electric intensity of red fruit and savory flavors with a lively line and very fine grained tannins to support, finishing with a minty lift.
-
Wine Spectator
Spicy and peppery, with plum and blackberry flavors cloaked in firm tannins, making for a chewy adventure. Best enjoyed with an entrée. Drink now through 2024.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.