Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple in the glass, the 2017 Pinot Noir Primera has a lovely nose of cinnamon stick and potpourri with perfumed earth, ripe black cherries and berries, orange peel and amaro—very expressive! Light to medium-bodied with great layers of fruits and spices in the mouth, it's well balanced and pure with wonderful juicy acidity and a frame of fine, grainy tannins, finishing long and layered. Lovely!
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James Suckling
Exotic and aromatic with dried strawberry, dried lemon and white pepper. Medium to full body. Round, creamy texture. Flavorful finish. Drink now.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
“Primera” is the title reserved for Tolosa’s best barrel selection, and is fully deserved by this first-rate Pinot Noir. Leading with a lovely, many-layered nose that is deep in explicit, oak-enriched, ripe cherry fruit and boasting continuous, beautifully composed flavors that are already showing a good deal of complexity, the wine exhibits terrific fruity stamina and is both supple and slightly fleshy with the structure to age with grace. Albeit involving and thoroughly satisfying right now, this is a cellarworthy Pinot with very good places to go, and those with the patience to lay it away and allow it to come into its best some four or five years hence will have no regrets.
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.