Nose
Aromatic and complex with ripe strawberry, dried black cherry and red currant fruit with cinnamon, vanilla, licorice and cola spice, coffee, leather with subtle smoky dry forest floor notes.
Palate
On the palate, an attractive mix of ripe red and black fruit with spice and toasty barrel notes joined on the midpalate by mineral texture and savory notes of leather and dried herbs. The finish is long and fresh with sustained fruit of black cherry and cranberry wrapped in fine tannins of moderate intensity.
Growing Conditions
With our vineyard sources for this appellation series wine located on the north eastern edge of the Sta. Rita Hills appellation, this wine reflects the “warmer” side of this cool Santa Barbara County AVA. These vineyards are exposed to the fog and consistently strong chilling breezes that sweep in from the Pacific Ocean. This combination of Mother Nature’s gift provides afternoon cooling and a longer growing season and rewards our patience with grapes of great structure and more complexity. For our 2014 Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir, we selected a mix of clones from two separate vineyards, Deirberg Drum Canyon and John Sebastiano. Both cluster and berry size are quite small due to the marine-influenced environment and the reward is a wine of unique character with a true sense of place, the Santa Rita Hills.
Bottling
Bottled without fining July 2015.
Winemaking
Each lot was destemmed into 1 ton fermenters with about 15% whole clusters, cold soaked for five days, inoculated and hand-punched twice a day for total of 16 days in tank. The wine was pressed at dryness.
Aging
François Frere Troncais and Remond Allier Barrels (35% new) for ten months surlee
Food Pairing
Cedar plank salmon or an aged prime steak right off the grill.
