Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple, the 2016 Pinot Noir Lewis MacGregor Estate Vineyard has a wonderful nose of fruit preserves: raspberry, red cherry and blueberry with dried cranberry, warm cinnamon stick, dried bark, orange peel and rose petal perfume. Light to medium-bodied, it explodes with intense ripe fruits, spices and earth notions, held in check by a sturdy frame of grainy tannins and lifted by mouthwatering acidity, finishing amazingly long and layered. 422 cases produced.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a grainy, structured and textured white, lifted by bright acidity and crisp flavors of apple, peach and pear. It has concentration of flavor as well as tension, offering length and balance within an elegant framework.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The deep purple-colored 2016 Pinot Noir Lewis Macgregor Estate Vineyard is another impressive wine and it's one of the richer, riper wines in the lineup. Plums, blueberries, ground herbs, violets, and earthy note all emerge from this medium to full-bodied, ripe, mouthfilling effort. It doesn't have the elegance or finesse to its tannins found in the top wines here yet it's very much in the pure, classic style of the estate. It should keep for a decade.
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.