Winemaker Notes
The single non-local vineyard, Hanspeter is super stoked by the site, which is a half-hour away on the lower hills of the Black Forest, on limestone layered with iron-rich clay, in a strikingly high elevation of almost 2,000 feet.
This wine is simply beautiful, grasses and flowers and filigree, and the mid-palate swells into lovely richness and length.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
With a dark cherry color, the just-ripe 2020 Pinot Noir Talrain has an elegant and coolish cassis bouquet that also reveals earthy and vegetable notes such as mushrooms, leek, green asparagus and, with air, wet earth. It's still pretty reductive even after a day. Fresh and elegant on the tight and dense yet also silky-textured and medium-weight palate, this is a juicy and fruity Pinot from a high altitude of about 500 meters above sea level. The tannins are fresh and savory, even somewhat astringent on the not-really-charming finish.
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.”
