Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
So fresh. The 2013 Pinot Noir has a distinct (I smiled as I tasted this) Szechuan peppercorn character on the mid-palate. It is exotic and spicy, wrapped in a bundle of red, glossy fruit. The whole bunch lends a balancing hand to this wine, steadying the tiller and guiding the fruit across the palate. There's an attractive minerality to this vintage, with graphite and coal dust. I love this vintage, as I loved the Chardonnay from the same year. Best After 2022
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.”
Directly south of the city of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula wine region, the cool-climate island of Tasmania has earned an honorable reputation as the country’s finest producer of Sparkling Wine. Naturally the region also excels in top quality still wines from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling, all distinguished because of a high natural acidity. Most of the Tasmania vineyards cluster around the eastern side of the island from north to south.