Winemaker Notes
This wine is true to the Tolpuddle Vineyard Pinot Noir style: intensely aromatic, balanced with savory spice notes from whole bunch fermentation, along with purity of varietal expression, fresh acidity and firm tannins. The 2017 vintage is very perfumed, medium bodied and approachable.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This 6th release of Tolpuddle Vineyard pinot noir is the finest work to date, as it shows refinement and true vineyard expression. The fruit aromas are wildly alluring with red and dark cherries, red plums, strawberries, pink grapefruit, blood oranges, peaches and pomegranate. Some light peppery notes and an array of freshly ground, hard brown spices, stony and sappy elements, crushed roses and violets. Very complex. The palate is just as impressive with a strikingly resolved mix of power and elegance. Flavors of red and dark cherries, persimmon, plums and blackberries are encased in a sleeve of helix-like tannins, which also carry long and emanate waves of fresh fruit flavor. Intense red cherries and red plums hold the finish long and pure. This is something special. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir is one of the darkest Pinot Noirs on the table. It shows restraint and balance in the mouth like no other—the whole bunch lends a peaty character to the wine and balances the beautiful red and black fruit in the mouth. This is a wine of balance. It has light (where things grow in abundance) and shade (where lichen and undergrowth rule), and both are in balance with the other—a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one. It pulses with a return flow of in-breath and out-breath. Best After 2022
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Vinous
Vivid red. Vibrant, spice- and mineral-kissed red berry preserve, cherry cola and floral pastille scents are complemented by incense and musky earth notes. Sappy, well-concentrated, penetrating Chambord, kirsch and spicecake flavors provide excellent palate coverage. Closes extremely long and smooth, with a dusting of fine-grained tannins that lend discreet grip to persistent red fruit and exotic spice notes.
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.