Winemaker Notes
The Foss Vineyard Pinot Noir is a knockout! Brimming with dark berries, the nose offers a wonderful spectrum of fruit-driven and earthy tones. Notes of cedar and a sous bois character mix with allspice and further add complexity and intrigue. Voluminous on the palate, this wine offers a beautiful balance of acid-to-fruit flavors. Typical of the site, the highly polished tannin give this wine a round mouthfeel. Flavors of oolong tea take over in the middle palate and an effusive cherry pit punch punctuates the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Williams Selyem Foss Vineyard Pinot Noir is a balanced wine, with an endless and lovely finish. TASTING NOTES: This is smooth wine. Its sophisticated aromas and flavors of ripe red and black fruit, some earth, and red berries are alluring and beautiful. Pair it with a savory chicken stew. (Tasted: July 30, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Connoisseurs' Guide
With an amplified sense of density and richness apparent from the outset, this comparatively full-bodied working ups the ante in substance while remaining insistently focused on black cherries and ripe berries and is filled out by a fine measure of well-considered oaky sweetness. It is one of the bigger wines in the Williams Selyem’s Pinot portfolio, but it never threatens to be too much of a good thing, and its imposing depth is a sure guarantor of good things ahead. Allow for at least three or four years of age here and anticipate very positive growth for a good half-dozen and more.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.