Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine blends all 12 clones of Pinot Noir grown on the property, to tremendous effect. Sanguine, it traffics in pretty pomegranate and cranberry, with a quenching taste of kirsch-like cherry. Lightly spiced, it delivers an end note of milk chocolate on the lengthy finish, a stellar, drinkable wine from start to finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Showing the freshness and purity of the vintage, the 2013 Pinot Noir Wayfarer Vineyard is a young, juicy Pinot Noir that offers lots of black cherry, black raspberry, violets, charcoal, and flowers. Fresh, edgy and lightly textured on the palate, it doesn’t have the sheer concentration of some of the single parcel releases, yet has plenty of depth, nicely integrated acidity, and polished tannin. It will be even better in another year or three.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby colored, the 2013 Pinot Noir Wayfarer Vineyard has nose of raspberry preserves, red plum compote and underbrush with touches of crushed stones, iron ore, dusty earth and smoked meat. The medium-bodied palate is tautly structured with firm, chewy tannins and oodles of freshness supporting the delicate red fruit and earthy layers, finishing long.
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.