Winemaker Notes
The 2016 Riva Ranch Vineyard Pinot Noir is subtle with delicate hints of baked red apple and baking spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
This single-vineyard Pinot Noir is sourced exclusively from the family’s own property, where a long, cool growing season and gravelly loam soils add character to the variety. Seven different clones are farmed to make up the complexity of the wine’s flavors and texture. Each is fermented separately in stainless steel, with twice-daily pumpovers; each lot is also aged separately for 16 months in French oak and then blended together. On the nose, spiced rhubarb, bramble, and red tea take shape. A nice body weight gives depth to layers of chocolate-cherry, cranberry, cinnamon, and a hint of new leather. White pepper and earthy gravel undertones tie it all together.
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Wine Enthusiast
Candied red cherry, clove and oak smoke converge for a very accessible and inviting nose on this bottling from the historic family’s estate. Pomegranate flavors meet with oak and vanilla bean on the palate, which is framed by chalky and sticky tannins.
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.”
Named after the dramatic, seasonal river of rain and snowmelt that cuts through the upper elevations of the Santa Lucia Mountains, the Arroyo Seco AVA extends east from the resultant mountain gorge, and into the rural and warm Salinas Valley. During the growing season, cool and damp Pacific Ocean air penetrates the gorge and flows into the valley, creating a cool evening respite for vineyards after a hot summer day. This natural water-release has also created a subterranean aquifer, which helps set the foundation of the AVA's boundaries and supplies the vineyards with water.
Arroyo Seco was actually home to the first commercial vineyard in California, called Mission Ranch, which was owned and propogated by the Mirassou family in the 1960s.
Chardonnay is most widely grown here. But as one of Monterey’s warmer regions, Arroyo Seco enjoys the highest praise for its reds, namely Bordeaux blends.
Arroyo Seco is one of the oldest AVAs in California, its status granted in the early 1980s, and also remains one of its smallest.