Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple, the 2017 Pinot Noir Coastlands Vineyard opens with notions of tar, loamy earth, wet bark and moss, slowly blossoming to dried blueberries, black cherries, oolong tea, dried violet and meaty/peppery hints. It's light to medium-bodied and earthy with pleasant woodsmoke and tobacco character, seamlessly woven tannic grain and freshness, finishing long. A very unique expression of the Coastlands vineyard this vintage. 238 cases were made.
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Wine & Spirits
Ross Cobb grows this wine for Williams Selyem at his vineyard in Occidental, and you can taste the marginality of the climate in the pink-peppercorn spice and stemmy green savor of the tannins. It’s lively and long, a powerful wine crowded with youthful dark-fruit flavor and spice, delivering all its energy with coolness. Compressed and impressive, this is a wine to cellar.
The Sonoma Coast AVA is large in area but, not counting overlapping regions like Russian River Valley, only has a few thousand acres of grapevines—and it’s no wonder. Much of the region is rugged and not easily accessible. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean’s fog and cool breezes limits the varieties that can be cultivated, but it proves to be an ideal environment for high quality Pinot Noir.
Since fog is a frequent fact of life here, as are heavy marine layers that sometimes bring rain, the best vineyards are wisely planted above the fog line, on picturesque ridges that capture enough sun to provide even ripening. That, with the overnight drop in temperature that reliably preserves acidity, results in fine expressions of Pinot Noir that often receive tremendous critic and consumer praise alike, and are often in high demand.