Williams Selyem Precious Mountain Vineyard Pinot Noir 2017
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Winemaker Notes
Brooding and mysterious, the 2017 vintage is a blockbuster of a wine. Dark fruited at the core, there is a tea and dried herb quality that adds layers to the aromatics. The heavily concentrated palate is a result of the struggle that the plants experience on top of the Sonoma Coast range. Berry flavors transition to elements of Russian Caravan tea and finish with a robust, but refined, tannin structure.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Precious Mountain Vineyard is pale to medium ruby-purple and youthfully shy, very slowly giving up cinnamon stick, warm blackberries, black and red cherries, pipe tobacco, prosciutto, earth and black tea leaves. It's light to medium-bodied and spicy but somewhat shy in the mouth, with a firm frame of chalky tannins and juicy acidity, finishing very long and spicy. This needs more time in bottle! 291 cases were made.
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Wine Spectator
Rich, featuring cherry and red currant flavors, backed by zesty acidity. Cocoa powder accents show midpalate, with a lively and well-spiced finish that reveals minerally nuances. Drink now through 2024.
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Williams Selyem Winery began as a simple dream of two friends, Ed Selyem and Burt Williams, who pursued weekend winemaking as a hobby in 1979 in a garage in Forestville, California, and made their first commercial vintage in 1981. In less than two decades, Burt and Ed created a cult-status winery of international acclaim. Together they set a new standard for Pinot Noir winemaking in the United States, aligning Sonoma County's Russian River Valley in the firmament of the best winegrowing regions of the world. Today John and Kathe Dyson, who purchased the winery from Burt and Ed in 1998, carry on the passion for Pinot Noir winemaking without compromise. As for the wines... they just keep getting better and better.
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.