Merchant Reviews
November 2007 Premiere Club Selection. Winemaking partners Dick Ward and David Graves began making wine in Carneros in 1981, when there was little interest in the “hard, green, slightly anemic” Pinot Noirs that plagued much of California. So they made it their goal to prove California’s potential for producing world-class Pinot, much the way other local winemakers had recently proven the state’s ability to compete in Cabernet and Chardonnay. They set to finding an ideal terroir and ideal winemaking techniques, and twenty-six years later, they lead the pack in crafting American Pinot. Their single-vineyard Brown Ranch bottlings serve as an example of the deep intensity and structure that can be obtained from a single vineyard in the Carneros AVA.
-- Maggie Fox, Gary’s Wine and Marketplace, November 30, 2007
Professional Reviews
Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wines, Feb 08
Rated: 92
It looks like a big-time return to form for a wine that has often rated very highly with us. The first inviting sniff of sweet cherries is immediately joined by notes of pie crust, creme brulee, smoke and hints of violets, and the wine follows on the palate with full and balanced impressions of ripe cherries, creamy oak and the elusive hint of tea leaf smoke that first showed up in the nose. Tannins rise rather starkly in the latter palate, but time is on this wine’s side, and a wait of some three to six years will bring it a more inviting, velvety texture.
Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar, Jan/Feb 07
Rated: 91
Good deep red. Complex and pure on the nose, with aromas of raspberry, flowers, pepper and subtle blood orange. Suave and energetic, with restrained pinot red fruits nicely framed by a positive peppery/herbal element. Firmly built but not austere. Finishes with a fine dusting of tannins. Structured, nuanced pinot that should blossom with a bit of bottle aging. Also tasted: 2005 Pinot Noir Stanly Ranch Carneros.
