About The Wine
Throughout the harvest season, we pick each block planted to Pinot Noir separately depending on its ripeness. In the winery, we continue to ferment each block in individual small lots and eventually age the wines separately in barrels. Naturally, certain barrels emerge as more concentrated, intense and profound than others. This 'Pali Vineyard Reserve' Pinot Noir is crafted from the best barrels and the best blocks on our vineyard. Only the best, intense, and most-concentrated of the barrels are selected for this estate wine–blended together prior to bottling. It most elegantly expresses the nuanced flavors of the Pinot Noir grape and the land they come from–a gentle, southeast facing slope comprising of mostly sandy soil. All grapes are hand harvested and hand sorted before fermented in small lots and aged in 100% new French oak barrels for 540 days.
The AVA
With a total area of 30,720 acres, the Sta. Rita Hills AVA is home to over 59 vineyards, totaling 2,700 hundred acres planted to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and 18 other cool climate wine grape varieties. The combination of a purely East/West maritime throat, poor marine-based soils, elevated calcium in the soil and the Pacific’s cooling influence through fog, wind and moderating summer heat combine to form one of the world’s best cool-climate viticulture areas for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Winemake Notes
Rich and dark, this is a powerful Pinot Noir showing black cherry, plum and baking spices on the nose with rich, bordering on hedonistic, flavors of dark fruits and comforting toasty notes of beautiful spice and earth on the palate.
