Winemaker Notes
Their Golden Mean Pinot Noir celebrates a union between the Swan clone, with its elegance and enticing perfume, and the Pommard clone, with its earthy aromatics and powerful structure. This ruby-hued wine begins with delicate floral notes that lead into bright red fruit aromas with hints of powdered cocoa and the suggestion of an ocean breeze. On the palate, fresh strawberry and cherry characters are supported by soft tannins and well-structured slate minerality. Balanced acidity makes this an easy food pairing wine—it’s ready to enjoy upon release, and will age beautifully for another 10-15 years.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Dark, brooding cinnamon and fleshy black plum provide an exciting, complex counterpoint to the rakish earthiness and exotic Asian spice going on in this full-bodied, explosively compelling wine, its minerality lingering. It's young and still tightly coiled, with lingering minerality; let it open to enjoy now, but it would show best after some time, so cellar through 2024. Cellar Selection
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Jeb Dunnuck
A blend that's made from a mix of Pommard and Swan, the 2014 Pinot Noir Golden Mean is another sensational 2014. Incredibly perfumed, with raspberry, violets, peach and floral notes, this beauty is elegant, seamless and pure on the palate, with the good acidity, and a seamlessness that's hard to believe. It picks up more spice and forest floor notes with time in the glass, has a big core of sweet fruit, and impeccable overall balance. It’s great today, but will easily continue drinking nicely through 2026.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Golden Mean is made exclusively from Pommard and Swan clones. Medium to deep ruby-purple, the 2014 Pinot Noir Golden Mean has a lovely floral nose of violets and roses over a core of red cherries and pomegranate with hints of cinnamon stick and toast. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is packed with perfumed red berry flavors with a solid frame of chewy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing on a spicy note.
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.”
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.