Winemaker Notes
On the nose, this wine offers aromas of fresh rose petals, raspberry cane, and wild bramble, cranberries, wild strawberry, dried tangerine, fresh blood orange, cocoa nib, a hint of bergamot and bay leaf. The palate shows powdery tannins with good persistence and seamless, silky length, opening up to sweet red berry fruit with delicacy and detail of earth, spice, and cassis bramble complexity. The finish is reminiscent of ripe wild raspberry, Satsuma plum, cinnamon, baking spices, and cocoa powder.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This exuberant wine from the estate site offers rich tones of forest floor and black tea. The palate brings wild strawberry, boysenberry and dried herb tones that veer into an intriguing note of white pepper on the finish. Editors’ Choice.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2016 Westwood Annabel Gap Vineyard Pinot Noir is wonderfully balanced and on point in its flavors. TASTING NOTES: This wine is razor-sharp in its palate-presence. Pair its vivid aromas and flavor of red fruits, mineral notes, and suggestions of black dust with grilled lamb chops. (Tasted: April 9, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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.”
Perhaps the most historically significant appellation in Sonoma County, the Sonoma Valley is home to both Buena Vista winery, California's oldest commercial winery, and Gundlach Bundschu winery, California's oldest family-run winery.
It is also one of the more geologically and climactically diverse districts. The valley includes and overlaps four distinct Sonoma County sub-appellations, including Carneros, Moon Mountain District, Sonoma Mountain and Bennett Valley. With mountains, benchlands, plains, abundant sunshine and the cooling effects of the nearby Pacific, this appellation can successfully produce a wide range of grape varieties. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gewürztraminer, and most notably, Zinfandel all thrive here. Ancient Zinfandel vines over 100 years old produce small crops of concentrated, spicy fruit, which in turn make some of the Valley's most unique wines. These can also be made as “field blends” (wines made from a mix of grape varieties grown in the same vineyard) along with Petite Sirah, Carignan and Alicante Bouschet.