Winemaker Notes
Aromas of Blackberry, dried bay leaf, red licorice and mushrooms with flavors of Black cherry, river rocks, pluot and cedar on the palate.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Rosemary's Vineyard Pinot Noir displays the most Burgundian bouquet, with lots of black cherry, forest floor, smoked earth, toasted spice, and subtle background oak. Rich and medium to full-bodied, with a beautiful mid-palate, this layered, incredibly well-balanced, seamless Pinot Noir is up with the finest efforts in the vintage. It has a sexy, sumptuous style yet will be even better with 2-3 years of bottle age and keep for over a decade.
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The Somm Journal
Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this is the farm’s coolest site, with chalky shale soil that contributes great acidity and age ability. Aged 17 months in French oak, the wine offers up scents of tomato leaf and brandied cherry. It’s an earth mother from treasured ground, with spiced cherry, cinnamon, cedar, and white pepper
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Rosemary's Vineyard, aged 17 months in 37% new French oak, opens with notions of crushed granite, wild strawberries, fresh raspberries, potpourri and dried herbs with notions of citrus peel and bark. Medium-bodied and very silky, it offers layers of bright fruits, spices and earth with a gentle frame and juicy freshness to lift the long, perfumed finish. Elegant!
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Wine Enthusiast
Fat black-cherry and plumskin aromas meet with elegant rose petals on the powerful nose of this bottling. It lands with a tightly wound frame, showing cocoa, sage and black-cherry flavors, finishing on a hint of vanilla
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: If I was pushed into a corner and asked, "Which California producer is on your shortlist of favorite Pinot Noir makers?" I would proudly say, "Talley Vineyards!" The 2017 Rosemary's Vineyard is outstanding. TASTING NOTES: This wine offers a superb balance of its elements. Its aromas and flavors of fresh red fruit, savory spices, and a tangy of minerality should pair it deliciously with a few fresh salmon and avocado handrolls. (Tasted: August 19, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
One of the coolest growing areas in California, the Arroyo Grande Valley runs from the southwest to the northeast, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Central Coast AVA. Situated so that cold Pacific Ocean air and fog is allowed to filter into the valley, Arroyo Grande also has an incredibly long growing season. Bud break occurs in February in most years with flowering in May and harvest in late September; the area is classified as cool Mediterranean.
These weather factors combined with the soil types—continental and marine rocks, greywacke, limestone, shale and volcanic—create wines with great concentration and fresh acidity. The cooler end of the valley is perfect for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and is a good producer of sparkling wines. The warmer, more inland part of the valley is home to some of California’s oldest Zinfandel vines.