Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lastly, the 2016 Pinot Noir Primera comes from the Edna Valley, and despite being a cooler region (one of the coolest in California), this wine is no lightweight, revealing a deep ruby color as well as a powerful bouquet of cassis, plums, toasted baking spices, bouquet garni, and subtle background oak. With plenty of fruit, medium to full-bodied richness, ripe tannin, and terrific overall balance, it’s going to benefit from 2-3 years of bottle age, and I suspect evolve nicely for upwards of a decade.
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.”
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.