Winemaker Notes
This wine has an expressive bouquet of cherry pie, raspberries, fennel, Asian spices and truffles. The heavier clay/loam soils add a textural component to the velvety tannins and rich flavors of wild raspberries, Bing cherries, cola, mushrooms and mocha coffee. This is a very sexy Pinot with lush textures and vibrant acidity. The acid frames this wine brilliantly and gives it a tremendous amount of focus.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This classy young Pinot is the second release from the winery’s only Petaluma Gap vineyard. It’s bone dry, mouthwateringly tart in acidity and delicate in structure, with complex cherry, cranberry, persimmon and cola flavors, nicely augmented by smoky oak. You can drink it now, after decanting for an hour or two, and it will soften a bit, or hold until 2020.
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Wine Spectator
Pure, fresh and rich, with vivid raspberry, wild berry, boysenberry and floral notes imparting a good mix of flavor and structure. Ends with a dash of black licorice, gaining on the finish. Drink now through 2022.
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.