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We finally coaxed this wine to full malo in mid-October. Long malolactic years tend to produce wines of great length and texture and in this case, suppleness. Stone and orchard fruit notes dominate the palate veering from pear to apple to nectarine but balanced by the classic salty minerality of Thieriot. The acidity provides a honeyed lemon character that complements the flint and white flower finish. An ethereal, “old vines” quality continues to dominate the wine in 2021. There is amazing palate presence but it never comes across as taxing. Freshness is probably the first thing we look for in our Pinots and Chardonnays and this wine always has that mouthwatering acidity that demands multiple sips. Thieriot started our Chardonnay program 15 vintages ago and we continue to see better and better wines coming from this special site in the future.

This has a finished pH of 3.17. I keep turning that number over in my mind wondering how that number impacts a wine this dense. The wine shows its natural acidity in its lemon curd mid-palate but then quickly veers into honeycomb, ripe orchard fruit, apple blossom and toasted bread. The pedigree of the site really shows through in its multi-faceted personality packing in orange peel, mint, white chocolate, chamomile and dried flowers on the finish. Platt’s reputation has been made through the years with its various Pinot bottlings but in 2021 at least, I’d argue the Chardonnay is the star of the vintage.

I’ve never tasted anything quite like this from California. The Rued clone is known to produce unique Chardonnays but this is even more complex than past vintages. The Alsatian like tropical notes are there but the wine is even more dominated by lychee, salted pineapple and honeyed flowers. The acidity has never been this bright before grabbing the tannin of the vintage to add a firm, chiseled cut throughout the entire palate. Past vintages have started out a bit muted but here everything is amplified even the vibrant, pressed flower character that wraps up the finish. We seem to be stuck on 4 barrels from our tiny sliver of this old vine Sonoma Coast vineyard but if this is what it produces, we are grateful for every vintage.

In recent tastings it has become clear that both Bearwallow bottlings in 2021 (Chardonnay and Pinot) are the best Bearwallow bottlings to date. The only problem is, I have no idea why. We’ve always loved the site and the farming remains impeccable. Maybe it is vine age that contributes more depth and complexity moving the wine away from its banana candy/tropical fruit dominated palate to something more peachy and white flower dominated. There’s a slight reductive quality too that adds pear and almond paste with the slightest bit of spiciness lingering on the finish. This is a more multi-dimensional Bearwallow and hopefully something we can figure out soon so we can replicate it in future vintages.

We never know what we are going to get with this tiny block of Chardonnay from Joy Road. The wine has veered from an almost Sauvignon Blanc like steeliness to a slightly botrysized warmer-sited white Burgundy in the 10 or so years we’ve worked with it. In the past few though, we are finally seeing the real character of what this site best represents, a true west Sonoma Coast site focused on a wide mix of fruit characters provided by the site and the clone. Its location leans naturally toward the citrus/yuzu side of the varietal while the clone provides richer fruit flavors of peach, pineapple, mango and a light, floral lift. It’s very unique in the line up and like Purrington Rued, tastes unlike anything else I’ve had from the area. It finishes with a chalky, white chocolate note that helps balance the acidity of the site.

This wine speaks very clearly to the common blending notion that the sum is better than any of its component parts. Comprised primarily of Riddle and Chouette Vineyards, the resulting wine knits together the best elements of each of the two vineyards. Where Riddle might have been a little lean on its own, Chouette lends generosity to the palate and a natural weight that speaks to the warmth of the site. Chouette veers toward the white chocolate/brioche side of Chardonnay but Riddle provides plenty of citrus fruits and minerals to add a crystalline texture for balance and cut. With 0% new oak for either of the two ferments, what you get here is a clean, focused snapshot of the Occidental/Freestone area of the Sonoma Coast in 2021. There’s a firmness to the vintage that provides volume and the promise of a long aging curve. Once again this wine way overdelivers when you compare its quality to its price.

Given the abundance of 2021, we were able to make some hard qualitative cuts and still have plenty of wine to satisfy our single vineyard needs. Whereas the 2019 was exclusively Riddle Vineyard, the 2021 features pieces of Joy Road and Bearwallow and small slivers of Summa and Occidental Ridge. This returns it more to an insight into the Occidental coast as a whole though it does skew stylistically toward the northeastern corner of that area. As I’m tasting this, it feels like a wine that will need a few years to fully open which could be a difficult trait for an appellation wine. We’ve never made this wine to be a lesser wine than the vineyard designates though. Our approach in the vineyard and winery is the same for all the lots that comprise a vintage. I think because of this, all the vintages of this bottling taste a bit differently. The 2021 leads with a medium plus color and a flavor profile featuring pomegranates, ground herbs, plum and black cherry. Smoke, loamy earth and spring flowers add a savory note to balance the fruit. There are some chewy tannins on the finish which reminds me of the 2013 and 2016. As usual there is very little new oak on this wine so the structure here is more fruit tannin than barrel.

This is definitely the most backward of the 2021s. Usually it’s one of the extreme Sonoma Coast bottlings that needs the most time to unwind but here this deep end Anderson Valley wine features abundant fruit tannin and natural acidity. I think the 12.9% alcohol also has something to do with that, there’s no glycerol sweetness to balance all the rawness of the wine at this early stage. The lower ripeness level leads to a wine that is light to medium in color and is focused aromatically on bright red fruits and floral notes of freesia and rose petals. The traditional wildness of Anderson Valley pokes in on the palate with chalk, mint, roasted herbs and loamy earth. Even for all the restraint, there’s a mouthwatering character to the wine that makes it appealing now with food and promises a long life ahead.

Silver Eagle was the only site for us that came in light in 2021 at just under 2 tons per acre. It is one of our earlier vineyards so there’s a chance it flowered in a period of erratic weather at the very beginning of the bloom cycle. We knew it was light from first glimpse seeing nice, open clusters and small berries. What this also meant in a warmer, drier harvest was an earlier than normal pick. All three of our blocks at Silver Eagle came in on August 30^th, a full 10 days before we picked anything else. The wine is incredibly concentrated, not unusual for this vineyard, but there’s a fruit purity that stands out making this instantly recognizable as Silver Eagle. The spectrum runs from deep red to purple fruits with elements of plum, sweet black cherry, pomegranates and black raspberries. We went a little higher on the whole cluster percentage in 2021 to help balance the concentration and add some mid-palate texture and aromatic pop. Even at 20% though, it’s hardly noticeable through all the palate weight. Somewhere deep down I’m sure there’s impact. The wine’s trajectory stays very focused and the mid-palate has a savory, textural component that adds smoke, graphite, mint, orange peel, lavender and spice to the framing tannins on the finish.

We coveted the Pinot Noir from Joy Road well before we even started working with the Chardonnay in 2013. Having spent many years walking the Chardonnay block before harvest and sneaking in for a little taste of the various blocks of Pinot fruit along the way, we felt we had a pretty good sense of the entire vineyard. The Chardonnay block here is only a third of an acre and most of the Pinot blocks aren’t much bigger so combining several blocks into one ferment was the pre-harvest goal. As we got closer to picking, we couldn’t get a handle on exactly how we wanted to blend blocks so we ended up fermenting everything separately, 7 lots across 3 acres. It was a lot more work but ultimately gave us great insight into the vineyard character, upper slope vs. lower blocks, same clone/different rootstock, Dijon vs. heritage clones, etc. There were a few surprises along the way but that also makes this first edition a much stronger wine. Surprisingly strong and surprisingly weak blocks in 2021 were properly slotted to this new single vineyard designate and our Sonoma Coast bottling. In character and proximity it is closest to Summa, red fruited and higher toned with a lifted white flower and sandalwood perfume and a crunchy, cranberry tinged palate. The acidity carries the finish which feels typical for this western Occidental neighborhood. We ended up bottling about 60% of the wine as this new vineyard designate, curious to see what we get with a little more knowledge and a fresh crack at it in 2022.

I feel like this is entering Summa territory where we have run out of original ways to describe the greatness of this site. Somehow this manages to be one of the most generous wines in the lineup every year while also having the greatest aging potential. Our last bottle of the inaugural 2005, consumed two months ago, tasted like it was two years old. As much as we talk about the acidity on the far west coast, this site slightly inland from the town of Occidental always has the lowest pH at harvest. In looking at the three individual Dijon clones, pick pHs ranged from 3.31 to 3.43, even with brix levels of 23 to 24.4. I’ve never understood how this happens but have always been thankful for what it contributes to the finished wine, a wine with great pliancy that retains a firm, textured mid-palate with a mouthwatering finish. Our goal is always weightiness without heaviness and no wine speaks to that every year like Occidental Ridge. Black raspberries, black cherries, pennyroyal mint, sage and underbrush dominate the nose and palate finishing with a healthy dollop of fruit tannin which seems to be a theme this vintage but also a quality this site imparts every year.

I’ve never seen a new wine in an established line up contend for wine of the vintage. We should have known when we planted this 9 acre plot in 2017 that greatness would come early given the Freestone neighborhood in which it resides. In hindsight, one of the smartest things we did was to plant the entire vineyard to the Calera clone. There are 5 blocks from this vineyard all fermented and barreled separately and it’s hard to create a pecking order. With neighbors like Occidental Winery and Platt Vineyard, the character of the wine comes as no surprise. It’s darker fruited and brooding packed with fruit tannin and vibrant acidity that give focus and lift. This wind buffered site comes with thick skins so color comes easily even at lower brix levels. The perfume is what grabbed us first: lavender, licorice, violets and wood smoke. As good as all this is, the best news might be that we have a lease in place for 2/3s of this site through 2050. I doubt I’ll have much to do with it at that point but it should be an integral piece of the Rivers-Marie line up for generations to come.

I love this wine, I just wish there was more of it. This part of the Freestone bench is slowly becoming the greatest area for Pinot on the Sonoma Coast. Our success with Platt is what inspired us to pursue the lease at Bodega Thieriot so vigorously. The wine is its usual darker than average color given the thickness of the skins in this block. There’s a brooding, Burgundian funk on the nose that fills up the room when you pour the first glass. It’s an exotic, kaleidoscopic mix of scorched earth, violets, spearmint, wood smoke and plums. As explosive as the nose and palate are, what really sets the wine apart is the texture. Every year this is the defining characteristic of the wine. It’s a wine that you feel as much as you taste. It coats the mouth and holds on. This is mainly fruit tannin that veers in several different directions contributing a scratchy, three dimensional palate impression that also adds a volume to the red and black fruits. There’s plenty of acidity to cut through the brooding initial impression. The cut here keeps the wine light on its feet and extends the finish for as long as you’d like it to last.

For me this forms a solid trinity with vintages 2012 and 2018, three years that featured abundant set out on the coast but came in fully developed due to long hang time and near perfect growing seasons. More so than even the other early fully formed wines in 2021, you could drink the regular Summa Vineyard from fermenter. There’s never been a sharp edge to this wine. Instead, time in barrel has added more energy and structure to the wine, allowing it to tighten up, focus and turn slightly reductive as we prepare to rack it for bottling. We always talk about making these wines as naturally as possible and the ultimate goal of that philosophy is allowing wines to find their center. This can take many forms, most involve taking an unpolished lot and letting it sort out its angular early stages. Very occasionally the center exists in the exact opposite direction when you have a wine so thoroughly developed as raw material, you want it to find some rough edges to add character and complexity. This is the case with the 2021 Summa Vineyard. The fruit spectrum veers from red to black to blue, reserving most of the orange elements for the Old Vines bottling. The palate is packed with higher toned elements of red cherries, redcurrants, kirsch and raspberries. The traditional savory features kick in early adding mint, rose petal and a crushed stone minerality. The tannins are very fine grained but still add a crunchiness to the red fruits creating an additional mouthwatering element to the finish.

Nostalgia can be a paralyzing trait. As much as we love some of the older vintages of this wine, the current run is just better. I’m not exactly sure where to start that period but based on recent tastings, 2015 is a good jumping off point. All farming practices at Summa are now done with the express purpose of improving the finished wine. That wasn’t always the case when the vineyard was farmed to sell fruit or the transition phase during the early years of our ownership where the focus was on restoring the vineyard to full health. As much as we pine for the earlier, simpler days (when both the SKU count and corresponding mailer were shorter), this site needed changes to achieve what we’ve seen the last few vintages. The new practices include pruning individual vines based on last year’s brush weight, minimal tilling, zero herbicides and dry farming. We feel these have contributed a completeness to the Summa Old Vines bottlings that was lacking in early years. Those years needed bottle age to find balance. These newer iterations feel fully realized even early on in barrel showcasing greater color density, deeper mid-palates and more generous, kaleidoscopic finishes. We keep thinking we’ve seen the qualitative zenith in this bottling in each previous vintage but then along comes 2021.

In 2020, we returned the Sonoma Coast Chardonnay to a combination of all vineyard sites we harvested. This included a new vineyard in the Occidental Ridge Vineyard neighborhood just east of Occidental called Chouette that we hope to make a consistent piece of this bottling for years to come. Chouette is planted 100% to the Montrachet clone of Chardonnay which has proven to be a good match with Riddle’s Wente clone vines. Where Riddle is citrus and mineral tinged, Chouette shows a little more weight and leans closer to brioche and stone fruits. The two combine to create a very complete Sonoma Coast bottling that is the most open knit of the 2020 lineup right now. Once again this wine was aged in 0% new oak, obtaining all of its richness and palate impression from site and vintage only.

Joy Road feels like it is becoming more and more consistent every year. It’s been hard to pin down the vineyard signature over the 7 or so years we have sourced fruit from this tiny parcel west of Occidental. In 2020, it is pretty exuberant reflecting the overarching vintage characteristic. All the fruit notes here lean to tropical but with bracing acidity to give the wine balance and present the wine more as exotic than overblown. This, like the Sonoma Coast, is very open right now, unusual for Joy Road. Maybe we finally picked this in its sweet spot, no doubt aided by the dueling factors of a warm year with a small crop and a site well situated to survive those vintage conditions. The fruit profile contains guava, ripe peaches, tangerine, salted pineapple but all buffered by a lemon zest/brulee undercurrent that helps to pull out and prolong the finish. There’s also a nice textural component on the finish that provides just enough scratchiness to add complexity. With only 4 barrels produced, we didn’t have a lot of options for new oak so we went with one new Louis Latour barrel that also helps with the citrus/mineral side of Chardonnay’s expression.

This wine shows how well the Anderson Valley fared in 2020. There is a completeness here that helps it stand out in the lineup. Tasting this wine today, you wouldn’t know there was any trauma out there for this vintage. In the past, the Bearwallow Chardonnay bottlings have primarily featured a yellow-tinged, tropical banana quality that made them easy blind tasting targets when we would open an entire vintage to taste. The 2020 is a much more multi-dimensional wine leaning more to apple/pear and riding a nice middle ground of equal parts tropical and citrus. The acidity is what you notice first, preserved by the warm year, followed by an openness showcasing all those perfectly ripe fruit flavors.

In looking to expand our Chardonnay production, we doubled our footprint in this 50+ year old Sonoma Coast site. Given the vintage though, we made a little less 2020 than we did in 2019. Try as we may, we can’t seem to make more than 4 barrels of Purrington Rued. This wine right now I’d call medium expressive. When we sat down to taste all the Chardonnays post-bottling, this was somewhere in the middle as to what you’d expect from the vineyard site. Like Platt and Thieriot, this wine seems to be a little inward leaning and more vertically built in 2020. There are some nice exotic fruit notes on the palate and nose which indicate clone but there are also mineral/savory elements of lemon oil, slate, sage, chalk and mint. The combination of yield and vine age has built an incredibly packed Chardonnay from Purrington Rued in 2020, one that feels like it may need a couple years to unwind.

Given the heat of the vintage, there’s not much botrytis to speak of in our two most coastal sites of Platt and Thieriot. That honeyed character I think is usually what separates Platt from the pack aromatically every year. Here the nose is much more spice focused with hints of mint, white pepper, chalk and chamomile. There are some white flower notes in there too which are quickly followed by a wave of high toned citrus fruits, lemon oil and tangerine zest being the most prominent. Like in all years, the natural acidity is what best balances the wine providing cut and focus for the very long, mouthwatering finish. There’s a tiny saline-tinged element at the very end that hints at the site’s proximity to the coast.

If I gave a slight nod to Platt in 2019, I’d say Thieriot has once again taken its place as the crown jewel of our Chardonnay lineup in 2020. It’s a more inward focused edition right now but with some coaxing all the salty minerality begins to emerge along with orchard and stone fruits, lemon curd, honeycomb and white flowers. Being a low botrytis year out on the coast, there’s more of the sea spray/oyster shell quality creeping in on the finish with citrus blossom, mint and chamomile creating an intense inner mouth perfume. The completeness of the wine is what probably most sets it apart from the other wines, no easy feat in 2020, and a testament to the greatness of this site.

I should have started this mailer more specifically with thank goodness for Bearwallow. If there has ever been a debate about the value of geographic diversity, it has been answered in the affirmative with this wine in 2020. At barrel down, this was so much better than all the other Pinots we attempted to make. This wine was harvested September 10th and I don’t think any smoke had made it to the deep end of the Anderson Valley at that point. Given the warmth of the year, the fruit here is a bit darker than years past, leaning more toward black cherry, plums and dark currants. There is the usual Anderson Valley wildness on the palate with roasted herbs, black tea, loamy earth, sandalwood and violets. The tannins are firm but well integrated adding a warm, spicy note to the finish.

With a line up of Calera, VR and Swan clones, Silver Eagle now has a firmer, less fruit forward character than years past. The addition of 15% whole cluster in this vintage also makes this the most structured wine in the line up. The wine leads with a savory edge of tobacco, grilled nuts and dried flowers. Sweet red cherries, plum, licorice, leather and spice dominate the palate. There’s only 10% new oak here so the character of the vineyard in this vintage really shines through. We’ve been at it here since 2009 and feel extremely fortunate to be presenting our 10th edition of this site from Ulises Valdez and his family.

One of the luxuries of an abundant year is the ability to be very selective on what makes the single vineyard cut. This version of the Sonoma Coast is the greatest amalgam of all the bottlings presented in a Chardonnay mailer. Like its Sonoma Coast Pinot sibling, Riddle Vineyard provides the backbone. That vineyard is represented here by green apple skin but then there’s 2 barrels of Platt (hint of botrytized citrus fruit), 1 barrel of Bearwallow (a banana like tropical-ness) and one 30 gallon stainless torpedo of Thieriot (lemon meringue). All of that sounds really good reading it back but the wine is even better. This doesn’t feel like an appellation wine. Like some of the single vineyard wines, there is a vintage inspired reduction that offers white chocolate complemented by a flinty, savory mix of pear, mint and chamomile tea.

This is the first offering of our Sonoma Coast bottling exclusively from Riddle Vineyard. As we continue to grab more and more of this vineyard, the ability to craft a standalone wine has become pretty simple. We use a little bit of every clone from the site and position those components to complement each other. The Mount Eden is picked early to add elegance and aromatic finesse, the 828 fills the mid-palate with sweet red and black fruit and the Pommard provides the structure that frames the finish. The wine is tightly packed with a little nervous energy and some zippy acidity to add freshness. The fruit mix moves from black back to red as the high-toned notes kick in. The savory components come up in the finish with licorice and gravelly earth, all with a floral top note.

We’ve been working with this deep end Anderson Valley site now since 2015 and have quickly whittled down our single vineyard bottling to one block. The E2 block is a mixture of over 30 clones all randomly budded throughout the block. We attribute the aromatic complexity to this abundance of raw material. We also like the diversity in berry size, skin color and flavor components this wild genetic mix contributes. Blood orange, rose petals, camphor, spice and mint make this decidedly different in the line-up of 2019s. It has a savory, savage side that we love about Anderson Valley. Cherry fruit, raspberries and wet stone fill out the palate leading to a kaleidoscopic finish framed like most 2019s more with tannin than acidity.

I’ve been writing notes for this mailer in pairs the last few nights. I have a case box with a bottle of each wine standing up waiting to be popped. It’s been amazing how the random drawing of wines has led me to perfectly appropriate vineyard pairings each evening. Tonight, it’s Platt and Summa Old Vines, the two most intense bottlings in the lineup. Though they translate very differently once finished, both sit at the extremes of what’s possible on the Sonoma Coast. I love the color of this Summa Old bottling, it’s decidedly red but so transparent and translucent. Its appearance would suggest a light wine but the palate experience is incredibly firm. We’ve talked about the aromatic fireworks in this wine for 17 vintages now, veering from candied orange peel to sweet red fruits to deep into the savory elements of a complex Pinot Noir, sandalwood, sous bois, pine needles, cut hay, mint and camphor. The wine smells dense at its core but the expansive aromatics keep it light and refreshing. The palate experience is very broad and again there’s an amazing weight that doesn’t come across as heavy or tiresome. This is a wine to cellar for sure but I can’t help but taking a lot of pleasure in popping and drinking this tonight.

When I cracked this wine to write a tasting note, I poured a glass and walked away to grab my laptop and start jotting down thoughts about the 2019 vintage. Finally ready to write, I took a quick first sniff and was convinced I had mistakenly opened a Summa Old Vines given the aromatic intensity. It brought a smile to my face to grab the bottle and see that it was as originally intended, my first bottle of the regular 2019 Summa Vineyard bottling. This speaks to just how far this bottling has come over the last 5 years. It has narrowed the gap to an almost imperceptible margin when compared to the Old Vines version. The difference has manifested itself on the nose and on the broadness of the palate. This bottling has added some of the savory characteristics of its elder sibling while retaining the deep, rich core that differentiated it in the past. There’s the classic Summa orange/red fruit profile that runs throughout the wine but it’s now joined by pine needles, cut hay and sage. A sanguine note also comes out on the end adding a coastal salinity to the palate. The only thing this wine lacks in comparison is the ethereal quality of the Old Vines, something only time can contribute.

68 cases, I keep turning that number over in my mind. I thought 2018 would be about as small a crop as we’d see out here but 2019 came in at .7 tons/acre. We’ve seen that before out at Summa but never thought we’d see it here. In hindsight, the potential is there being up on a wind buffered ridge with direct line of sight of the ocean. We always talk about what naturally low yields mean to Pinot so we are seeing our third straight spectacular wine from this block of Platt. Quality is definitely trending in the right direction just need quantity to follow. This edition has more in common with 2018 than 2017. It’s a broader shouldered wine bolstered by formidable skin tannin and its always naturally high acidity. The aromatics are always the most Burgundian of the lineup featuring notes of sweet black fruits, smoke, candied peel, crushed stones and loam. Tannins poke in on the mid-palate contributed by the thick skins and tiny berries common in this Calera clone block. The finish is long and firm but stays succulent and juicy framed more by acidity than structure.

Every vintage I have a personal favorite in each varietal’s line up. Without question in 2019, it is the Occidental Ridge. It certainly has to do with how much I enjoy the wine but also the memories of the growing season at this particular site, the several walks throughout the year and the fermentation cycle all contribute to the details behind the pick. One of the usual contributors to this annual contest is how well the full potential of the raw material is captured in the finished wine. We find ourselves too often looking for the flaws in what we make, it’s what motivates us to improve our farming and winemaking every year. Here though, we allow ourselves to simply enjoy the wine for how good it is and give ourselves the slightest pat on the back before getting back to the small tweaks we seek to implement after another year under our belts. Completeness has a lot to do with our enjoyment of this vintage of Occidental Ridge, there are no holes in the experience even at this young age. Drinking this wine is a densely packed experience. The tannins never overwhelm the fruit, the acidity keeps the wine mouthwateringly fresh and the aromatics sing at first sniff. We’ve talked about this site as the co-flagship of the Rivers-Marie Pinot line-up and this edition of Occidental Ridge only reaffirms that.

I love it when we achieve that backward, brooding Burgundian funk on the nose of our Pinots. Like the green tint in young Chardonnays, it is a sign of minimal handling, a quality which means all the youthful potential of a wine is perfectly preserved in bottle. One way we achieve this with Silver Eagle is through the addition of 10-15% whole cluster. I’m not sure if that’s the trait that aligns it with Occidental Ridge but they feel like companion wines in 2019. That little extra bit of structure and aromatic intrigue cuts through the primary fruit character inherent in the site. It broadens the entire experience of the wine. We have also been cutting back on the new oak percentage here landing at around 15% the last two vintages. The fruit profile here is blue, red and black packed with sweet red cherries, black raspberries and plum. There’s also a savory tilt toward gunpowder, dried herbs and mint. Like previous years, this wine will take a few years to unknit and I definitely think its best years are ahead of it. The cool, blue-fruited texture here lays on the palate for a full minute creating a very unique Pinot in 2019.

The base here is incredibly similar to the 2018 version but what sets it apart is the addition of the Buselli Vineyard from Oakville. We debated for quite some time about bottling this new site separately but, in the end, we felt it wasn’t quite good enough. It was close so it definitely takes the quality of the Napa bottling up a couple notches. It’s in the same neighborhood as Oakville Terraces so here it adds a black fruited streak plus some some crushed rock and white flower notes. The same lots from Panek, Herb Lamb and Oakville Terraces make up the rest of the blend with Panek contributing the fruit, Herb Lamb a top note of varietal herbaceousness and Lore the minerality. There’s plenty of acidity to frame all these different elements and give the wine focus. As we mentioned in the opening, there are no mediocre sites represented in the entire 2019 line up and the appellation wine provides best testament to this fact. We never set out to source appellation quality vineyards. We only want to grab what interests us and then sort through the lots as they develop in barrel. This makes our appellation Cabernet one of the best QPRs in the valley.

The Calistoga always reminds us of what wines from Napa used to taste like. It’s more savory then sweet, more structured and reticent than fruity and open knit. This bottling achieved a new level last year with the addition of the small Jenkins clone block next to our original Olmo clone section. The two lots were picked, fermented and barreled individually to make sure they were compatible before final blending. As much as we focus on the clonal selection across the blocks, the thing that really stands out is the site. Larkmead for us has always produced aromatically intense, inward focused wines that tend toward a walnut husk, dried herbs and tobacco varietal expression. These wines are always the least complete in the lineup at release but then quickly fill out and find their balance after a year or so in bottle. It takes a while for wines from this site to find their fruit and throw off some initial structure. The density of the 2019 helps balance the structure and provides ample buffering for all the savory notes of licorice, cedar wood, forest floor and violets. Fruit comes up in the end after an hour or so in decanter and features elements of crème de cassis, black raspberries and blueberries. There’s a dustiness to the finish that adds grip and texture and an element of perceived ageability to the 2019 Calistoga.

We continue to add a bit more of the mature blocks of Panek into the final blend. 2018 saw the addition of three barrels from an older clone 191 block and we did the same here plus a few barrels each from clone 4 and clone 7 blocks. There’s a seriousness to these original Panek plantings that complements the 5 acres of younger vines in the front of the parcel. I don’t think it’s just vine age, it definitely has something to do with the soil where you see more evidence of old river bed on the surface of the site. The cordon training here also contributes a naturally smaller crop that is black fruited and deeper in color. We now ferment up to 8 blocks individually before making the final decision as to what goes into the single vineyard wine and what ends up in the Napa blend. The 2019 opens with notes of smoke, cassis, dried herbs and graphite. The palate is much darker than previous years with blackberry compote, currants, crème de cassis and violets leading into a long, textured finish that has plenty of tannin to buffer all the fruit inherent in the site.

The only thing that has changed here is the name. This represents the 6th year of our lease of this site and we continue to refine the farming every year. The vineyard was really struggling when we took it over, nutrition, irrigation protocol and canopy management were all neglected under the previous owners. With focus on individual block health, we now feel we have harnessed all the potential of this A+ Oakville site. Oakville Terraces continues to be the most serious wine in the Rivers-Marie Cabernet portfolio. The 2019 is full of pure black fruits, liquid smoke, graphite, scorched earth and espresso roast. The acidity of the vintage cuts through all the structure. It also helps make this the most aromatically lifted version of Oakville Terraces to date. The nose leads with blueberries, crushed rocks, spring flowers and camphor. The texture might be the most intriguing thing about the wine helping to prolong the finish and give the wine a lightness that belies its origin.

This is it for Herb Lamb Vineyard for us for now, the vineyard was lost to fire in 2020. We did harvest fruit from the site last year but the smoke taint was too much to consider bottling it. So, 2019 is it. It’s all a huge tragedy especially for Jennifer Lamb and her family who have put so much energy and passion into growing some of the best fruit in the Napa Valley. As I was writing this though, Jennifer reached out to say Herb Lamb Vineyard was replanted on Bastille Day 2021, amazing news after a tough year. This wine represents the second year of what was supposed to be a 10 year lease of the vineyard. To put a positive spin on things, the two wines that have come out of this lease are two of the best wines I’ve ever made. There’s nothing else in Napa that tastes like Herb Lamb where the resulting wines feel like they have a foot in two different eras. The idea of varietal greenness or herbaceousness is such a frowned upon trait in modern Cabernets. There’s no getting around that here and it makes for such a compelling experience combining the best of Napa’s past with all the current refinement in farming and winemaking. The varietal character is more of a top note of tobacco, olive, pencil shavings and menthol which become more pronounced as the wine opens in the glass. The fruit profile is blue and black fruits complemented with spring flowers, white chocolate and sandalwood. I’d love to see this one day pop up in the portfolio again but barring that, this is a great way to go out.

Like its Pinot Noir counterpart, the 2019 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay comes entirely from Riddle Vineyard in Occidental. We purchase all the Chardonnay (and most of the Pinot) Jim Riddle grows at his 10 acre site. In the past, it has always needed a few barrels of the other vineyards to present a complete wine. Here the combination of vine maturity and clonal selection have elevated this wine to nearly the same level as the single vineyard wines in this mailer. Planted 100% to the Wente clone, Riddle produces tiny berries full of citrus, mineral and white pepper notes. It also produces wines with enormous amounts of dry extract giving this wine a very broad but dense mouth feel. The dry finish comes up in the form of chalk and mint with a little white peach and honeysuckle creeping in to round out the finish.

This wine showcases just how great the 2019 vintage was on the north coast. The aromatic pop, sweet entry and kaleidoscopic finish highlight the completeness of wines from this year. All the normal yellow fruits are here plus a salty, mineral flecked nuance that we have never seen before. Pear, almond and lemon confit define the palate as the wine starts to unwind toward a waxy richness. Just like last year, there’s the slightest hint of reduction in the wine which manifests as white chocolate and matchstick. The tiny berries from this impeccably farmed site though produce a white that has structure and grip and will definitely need a year or two to unwind in the cellar.

This site is always a bit of a chameleon. It seems to shift to whatever the overarching vintage characteristic is in a given year. We’ve seen this wine go from fat to firm to almost Sauvignon Blanc in style during the racy year of 2014. The last few years however it appears to have finally developed its own personality. It contains all the best palate traits of the three other single vineyard Sonoma Coast wines in this release, the medium ripe tropical fruit notes of Purrington Rued, the sea spray of Thieriot and the honey tinged citrus of Platt. The nose is a touch reticent at first but with air turns to wet stones, lime blossom and gunpowder. Tightly coiled and inward leaning, the palate follows suit with more savory notes complemented by tangerine, honeysuckle and white peach. Going back and tasting the first few vintages of this wine also shows this might be the best aging site in the lineup.

You can talk about what wine is objectively best but that’s not always what you personally prefer or want to drink at a given time. For me, I can debate the merits of the various wines in this release but what I want to drink is the Purrington Rued. I love the uniqueness of this bottling, there’s nothing else that tastes like it. I’m still a little shocked we have the ability to source from this 50+ year old vineyard located in the heart of what’s known as Dutton Valley. There’s not much like this anywhere on the Sonoma Coast when you consider its age, location and farming pedigree. I keep wanting to call this tropical but that’s not quite right. If there is an exotic fruit note it’s candied, salted pineapple but there’s also dried white flowers, apricot, jasmine, fresh sage and orange blossom. Here the vine age contributes an incredible amount of palate weight without the slightest hint of heaviness.

This was my favorite Chardonnay from tank right before bottling in December. I thought it was a tick above the Thieriot in aromatic complexity and palate depth but I was also impressed with how much better this bottling has gotten every year. This is our third year in this block of Platt and that sounds about right for figuring out how best to make it. I can’t really think of the actual tweaks we’ve made but whatever they are, they work with this 2019. If I had to guess, I’d attribute it to the vineyard and one additional botrytis removal pass right before harvest. This edition comes across as a little more focused than 2017 or 2018 with more fruit and acidity allowed to shine through the minimized honey top note. It’s immediately apparent on the nose which jumps from the glass with saline, spicy apple, freshly baked bread and mint. Even with all this natural acidity, the palate is broad and generous with ripe orchard fruit, smoke, sage, chamomile and dried flowers. This is giving so much right now but with this level of acidity and concentration, it should go for 7-10 years in the cellar.

I’m not sure how much better this wine can get. We’ve been out here since 2007 and have seen this improve every year we’ve worked with it. The green/gold complexion as always is there suggesting a wine with a long life ahead of it. The site character has become very well defined on the palate: lemon zest, sea spray, brioche, white flowers, orchard fruit and citrus blossom. The completeness of the wine is hard to fathom sometimes. If California ever adopted a vineyard classification system, I have no doubt this site would be in the top tier for Chardonnay.

I could write a note on the aromatics alone for this wine. It literally features every aromatic descriptor we have ever used for this bottling: sandalwood, pine needles, black tea, orange peel, forest floor, pomegranate, violets and crushed rock. That’s a lot to take in on just the nose. The palate is its normal backwards self, another edition that will best be enjoyed with at least 5 years in the cellar. At 40 years old, the vineyard is still improving producing much more consistent wines even in more challenging climatic conditions. We have been replacing underproducing vines in this block every year since 2015 and have every intention of preserving this coastal jewel. There are occasional vintages where another bottling may outshine the Summa Old bottling but this will always be the flagship of the project.

I felt like this was the most complete wine in the lineup at bottling and that continues to be the case today. At 20 years of vine age, there is no longer an impression of this being the baby Summa bottling. Better farming and vine maturity have eliminated all the holes found in previous editions of this wine. It has also provided nuance that makes this wine more and more similar to its Old Vines sibling every year. This once again is richer and a little deeper than that wine but it is beginning to catch up on the ethereal side of things. There’s a lightness that cuts into the richness which provides a mouth-watering freshness to the palate. Red fruits, citrus peel, cut hay, sandalwood and clove complete the experience.

Even we were a little late to realize how good the 2017 version of this wine was. Maybe it was the small case production and therefore lack of opportunity to open bottles that created this but we made up for it after realizing our mistake. Coming into this release, I’d say the 2017 Platt is certainly one of the top 5 Pinots we have ever made. The 2018 eclipses that wine. It’s the closest thing to Burgundy I’ve ever tasted in California and not in the way most people think. The nose is what takes me there, that little bit of brooding, Burgundian reductive funk that both promises early intellectual intrigue and long life in the cellar. It drinks like a wine that needs to be unwound. The palate is savory and gamey, with a really dark fruit profile. Tannins here are abundant due to the thick skins of this wind buffered block. The only thing missing in this wine is quantity.

This feels like an anniversary themed mailer as this vintage represents Summa Old turning 40 and Summa and Occidental Ridge turning 20. This past year I’ve been thinking a lot about how the next generation will routinely be working with 50-70 year old Pinot and Chardonnay vineyards throughout Sonoma Coast. I have to admit that makes me a little jealous as I do believe vine age makes a tremendous difference with those two varietals. We are just beginning to see it with Occidental Ridge and the regular Summa bottlings as the consistent excellence of these two sites shines through in diverse vintages. Occidental Ridge in particular continues to ratchet up its intensity level while preserving the cool fresh fruit character and naturally high acidity that has become its hallmarks. There’s more of everything here but all in equal proportion. Pennyroyal mint and pine needles contribute a savory edge to complement the mostly black fruits of the vintage. There is once again a 10% whole cluster addition that adds texture and cut to the mid-palate.

With a line up of Calera, VR and Swan clones, Silver Eagle now has a firmer, less fruit forward character than years past. The addition of 15% whole cluster in this vintage also makes this the most structured wine in the line up. The wine leads with a savory edge of tobacco, grilled nuts and dried flowers. Sweet red cherries, plum, licorice, leather and spice dominate the palate. There’s only 10% new oak here so the character of the vineyard in this vintage really shines through. We’ve been at it here since 2009 and feel extremely fortunate to be presenting our 10th edition of this site from Ulises Valdez and his family.

We’ve been working with this deep end Anderson Valley site now since 2015 and have quickly whittled done our single vineyard bottling to one block. We have always loved the E2 section of the vineyard and focusing on this one area has provided what we think is our most complete Bearwallow to date. Addition through subtraction in this case has produced a high toned, more pure red fruited wine with notes of crunchy red apple skin, cherry compote and menthol. The aromatics are very developed with floral tones of rose petals and violets jumping out first followed by black tea and mint. Some of the savage nature of previous editions has been replaced by a more focused minerality on the finish.

As Riddle Vineyard goes, so goes this wine. With maturity this site has taken on a lot more density at much lower brix levels. Not only do we feel that provides a more accurate snapshot of Sonoma Coast but it also reflects the general development of the region. It wasn’t that long ago that every wine felt like it featured new vines freshly cultivated and variable in quality due to the challenges the coast provides. Now we feel we are routinely dealing with 15, 20, and 30 year old vineyards, young by old world standards of course, but stable and mature in this area. Riddle is a perfect example of this maturation. The wine is more concentrated without being heavy or tiresome. The fruit profile is varied, running from red to purple to black with an intense perfume that in younger years had to be pulled out with bottle age. In this vintage, tannins are abundant but ripe and round helped by small additions of most of the single vineyards.

Keeping with the theme of expansion, we added another block of older vines from Larkmead in 2018. Neighboring our original block of Olmo clone is a tiny block of Jenkins clone Cabernet resting in the same Cortina soil. We have always loved this clone of Cabernet having worked with it at Outpost’s True Vineyard and Gemstone Estate. There’s nothing else quite like it in the world of Cabernet. It manages to be both exotic and wildly singular while still coming across as very complete. It has proven to be a very nice complement to what we’ve been working with from Larkmead since 2012. The color here is a bit darker than normal with mostly fruit tones first present on the nose. That familiar muscular walnut husk, roasted nut quality of Larkmead pokes through quickly though placing this wine stylistically in more of a classic era of California wine. Where in the past this wine could be considered the “lightest” of the lineup, the 2018 shows the power of the vintage and a marked improvement from the addition of the new block. The fruit is still purple leaning and the ethereal notes of the past still pop out on palate entry but a weightier middle kicks in almost immediately with notes of sage, graphite, cassis, lavender and a brambly spice note. The tannin starts earlier too adding texture and a dusty, baker’s chocolate note. In the past, I felt this bottling would always need a few years in the cellar to present a complete palate expression. Not so here with the addition of our little Jenkins block. All these additional blending options from all these great sites prove in 2018 that sometimes more is more.

I can't think of a better way to create our Napa blend than by combining lots from Herb Lamb, Lore and Panek. This is the first time we have had enough of certain sites to declassify significant portions into our appellation bottling. Not only does this help this bottling but it has made Herb Lamb and Panek much stronger wines when compared to their 2016 editions. The 2018 Napa bottling feels very complete at this young age and breaking down this attribute is very simple when looking across the components: Panek provides the fruit, Lore provides the structure and Herb Lamb contributes some varietal savory-ness. It’s hard to say if any particular vineyard component dominates the blend because you can sense shared characteristics from all the sites across the entire spectrum of the wine. Black fruits dominate the aromatic and the palate. There’s a blue fruited acidity that punches in late showcasing the coolness of the vintage. Savory elements weave through the whole experience creating a classic Napa mouthfeel, something more akin to the wines from the early 90s than the early 00s. Tannins here are medium/medium plus which makes this very drinkable upon release. As with all appellation wines, we hope this gives you good insight into the quality and character of the vintage. We think you will be very pleased with what you see.

Panek Vineyard’s early ripening nature was a blessing in 2017. All 5 blocks we work with achieved full ripeness giving us quite a bit to choose from in this vintage. That coupled with continually improving farming gave us more quantity than we hoped for pre-harvest. We harvest clones 169, 7, 337, 4 and 6 from Panek and in the past there were a few blocks that never were considered for the finished blend. In 2017, we could have put it all in and been extremely happy with the result. Knowing the vintage’s reputation, we choose to be a little more selective and used parts of the 169, 7 and for the first time ever 337. That block continues to make incredible leaps forward producing what looks to be our best block of Panek in 2018. This edition comes across as a mix of everything that preceded it. There’s good red/black/blue fruit sweetness, a nice caramelized brown sugar component, wet stones, violets and smoke. This like the Napa, has a little bit of an old school feel with some savory notes of sage, liquid minerals and roasted meats. It is a difficult vintage to name check but we like the completeness and drinkability of this wine just as we did with the 2011 version, another challenging year where this site shined.

You can really see the structure of the vintage in this wine. If any wine in the lineup was going to show what maximum extraction levels in 2018 look like, it was going to be the Lore bottling. The color is a different level of dark compared to everything else this vintage. The initial aromatic notes are very brooding and backward: espresso roast, scorched earth, graphite and blackcurrants. There is some give to the palate with higher toned notes of violets, milk chocolate and cassis fighting their way in. If there is one thing I keep coming back to when tasting this wine, it’s the texture. The many layers that unfold as you move from entry to mid-palate to finish help define this vineyard’s greatness. You see that in all six vintages of the Lore bottling. The eastern Oakville hills location provides this wine with ample tannin, but it is very ripe helping to frame and lengthen the finish. Tannin maturity is what we use to determine our pick date. Color, aroma, flavor and acidity are always abundant in this wine but unlocking the true greatness of the site comes down to the quality of its tannin. Our goal is to produce wines that speak of their place first and this wine and the Herb Lamb that follows couldn’t be greater evidence of the achievement of that in 2018.

We couldn't ask for a better vintage to begin our 10-year lease agreement with the venerable Herb Lamb Vineyard. 2018 allowed us the opportunity to wrap our arms around the entire property and get a sense of what blocks were of single vineyard quality and what would be blended into the Napa appellation wine. In the past, Herb and Jennifer had always been generous enough to allow grape buyers a center cut of the best block in the vineyard. This established core became known as HL1 and was easily the best vineyard block we harvested across all Rivers-Marie Cabernet picks in 2018. HL2 came next with some slightly more vigorous vines at the top of the property and some shade effected vines at both ends of the center block. We finished harvest here with HL3, a bottom block that has more vigor than any other spot in the vineyard plus the three bottom rows of the center block which see a lot of run off during the winter. We evaluated these three separate lots after 14 months in barrel. The initial tasting showed HL1 clearly belonged in the single vineyard wine while HL3 was destined for the Napa blend. HL2 showed a lot of promise, question was how much could make the single vineyard cut. Layering in that lot one barrel at a time showed a tremendous amount of improvement to the blend with one barrel added, less so with two barrels and then another marked improvement with three barrels. Blending is rarely linear so continuing to that 3-barrel mark proved very beneficial as we had found the blend we were looking for. HL1 provided the power and pure black fruited elegance we love from this site while HL2 layered in varietally true notes of creosote, grilled meats, camphor, sweet tobacco and olive. We feel fortunate to have the flexibility to blend across these blocks, not only for what it does for the Herb Lamb bottling but also its contribution to making the 2018 Napa the best appellation wine we have ever bottled.

One of the luxuries of an abundant year is the ability to be very selective on what makes the single vineyard cut. This version of the Sonoma Coast is the greatest amalgam of all the bottlings presented in a Chardonnay mailer. Like its Sonoma Coast Pinot sibling, Riddle Vineyard provides the backbone. That vineyard is represented here by green apple skin but then there’s 2 barrels of Platt (hint of botrytized citrus fruit), 1 barrel of Bearwallow (a banana like tropical-ness) and one 30 gallon stainless torpedo of Thieriot (lemon meringue). All of that sounds really good reading it back but the wine is even better. This doesn’t feel like an appellation wine. Like some of the single vineyard wines, there is a vintage inspired reduction that offers white chocolate complemented by a flinty, savory mix of pear, mint and chamomile tea.

I’m a little stunned by how complete this wine is only six weeks removed from bottling. There have always been holes in previous editions that time helped fill, no need here. The nose grabs you immediately with a broad spectrum of citrus notes most notably kaffir lime and lemon rind with just a touch of reduction to make the aromatics linger. This is a true coast site so the first palate perception is a framing acidity that brings forward chalk, menthol, lanolin, almonds and lemon oil. Though the 3.27 finished pH wouldn’t suggest it, there is some give to the wine in the way of salted butter, white flowers and a yellow fruited confit.

The exoticness of this site continues to amaze us. It starts with notes of candied ginger, apricot compote, nectarines and lychee. Like the 2017, it has Alsatian overtones that don’t immediately scream Chardonnay. That comes in later with a dense textural impact and a swerve toward lemony, citrus notes. This wine is a combination of so many things we strive for in our winemaking: site, clonal and vintage expression here coupled with vine age. These vines are 50 years old which allows us to do very little in the vineyard and cellar to make what we think is the best version of this site. Only vine age can do that with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. We touched on our future jealousy a bit in the last Pinot mailer, how the next generation will find working with 40, 50, 60 year old sites commonplace. Here we get a little glimpse into that future.

No surprise this possesses more than a passing resemblance to Thieriot. Sea spray and crushed oyster shell always remind us of the most far flung Sonoma Coast sites, almost as if the fog that wraps itself around this area carries ocean mist to the grapes. The naturally low pH pushes the fruit to high-toned: lemon peel, nectarine and orchard fruits. There’s also a savory quality that adds complexity and depth, tea leaves and mint accentuated by salted butter. Coiled tight for now, all the potential resides in the mid-palate where the acidity provides a cool freshness that’s both mouthwatering and luscious.

There’s not much more to say about wines from this property. The consistency of the site provides such great raw material every year. This version has all the lemony goodness and mouthwatering acidity you expect from Thieriot with complimentary notes of white peach, candied pineapple, pear and honeysuckle. With zero noticeable oak, the excellence of the vineyard shines through showcasing both a great growing season and the precise farming of Ulises Valdez Jr. and his crew.

This version of the Sonoma Coast Chardonnay contains pieces of all of the single vineyard wines plus Riddle Vineyard as its base. The racy character of the wine gives you an insight into the overall vintage character on the coast. Here the expression specifically is wet stones, lime blossom, green apple and a touch of honeysuckle on the finish. The wine is focused, pure and precise. With 0% new oak and no lees stirring, there’s nothing to get in the way of the fruit. The vintage helps make this our most successful appellation Chardonnay to date but also severely limited quantity. We expect this to go fast.

We love the uniqueness of the wines from this Terry Adams owned site in Occidental. No two vintages have been the same in our brief history here. This wine strikes a middle ground stylistically compared to previous years. It is not quite as fat and viscous as the 2015 or lean and flinty as the 2016. It also possesses a little more varietal character than those two previous vintages. There’s a chalkiness that is distinctly Chardonnay but not necessarily California Chardonnay. It is more Chablis like in its racy finish and smoke and beeswax palate notes. The focus of the overall wine is what I keep coming back to though, there’s a precision here that Joy Road has never possessed before.

It’s nice to see this stand out from the pack, mostly because it should. Our winemaking style has always produced site driven wines first and here we get a small assist from the vintage to complete the delineation. This might be the one bottling that has a little more give than its previous vintage version. It is once again yellow fruit focused with additional notes of hazelnut, white peach, guava and chamomile. A little bit of white chocolate emerges on the finish to give more roundness to the wine.

We are incredibly excited to add this site to the line up. When Ulises Valdez first showed us this newly leased piece, we thought we’d grab some for our Sonoma Coast bottling. After fermentation and a small dig into the history of the site, we knew this four barrel lot was destined for vineyard designation. Planted in 1969, the vine age is immediately apparent on the palate of the wine. There’s impact but it is subtle. At 50 years old, the wine is now more about the site than the clone. Rued clone Chardonnays are usually more tropical than this but here the expression is unique to the wine’s location. Apricots, almonds, nectarine, brioche and tangerines dominate a palate that at times takes an almost Alsatian turn in character. Like the other wines in the line up, there’s no mistaking this for any other site once you have some experience with it. Unfortunately the four barrel won't go far but we hope to make a little more in the future (2018 is a whopping 6 barrels) and keep this around as a permanent part of the line up.

Whereas Purrington Rued was a bit of an unknown to us, we knew to expect great things from Platt. After a less than stellar 2016, we now feel that we have captured all the greatness of this site. Perched near the top of the range in Freestone, this 1.5 acre block of Wente clone Chardonnay came in just above 2.5 tons an acre in 2017. The initial pressed pH of 3 is the lowest we have ever seen at Rivers-Marie. This site is cooler than even Thieriot and that comes through in the character of the wine from its initial, bracing acidity to the long lemon oil dominated finish. Sandwiched in between this are notes of poached pear, honeysuckle, white pepper, white peach and pineapple. There’s a mild honeyed note that arches over the wine due to a little botrytis in 2017. The acidity is what you always come back to though, focusing the wine and prolonging the finish for a minute plus.

This special site right across the street from Summa proves more interesting to us every year even as we begin to run out of original things to say about it. We’d attribute that to better farming but also to vine age. Planted in 1990, we have begun to see “old vines” qualities come out in this wine the last several years. Consistency is probably the most valued attribute as this vineyard has weathered the droughts, deluges and heat of the last several years. Through it all, the wines produced from here continue to show site character first and vintage character second. There is an amazing palate presence in this wine but it never comes across as taxing. Freshness is probably the first thing we look for in our Pinots and Chardonnays and this wine always has that mouthwatering acidity that keeps the wine lively. The Thieriot has a crushed rock minerality that separates it from all the other wines in the line up. Its proximity to the coast also provides saline and oyster shell notes that are more aligned with grand cru Chablis than California Chardonnay. The complexity here increases every year and we are thankful that this special site has been the cornerstone of the Rivers-Marie Chardonnay program now for over 10 years.

With such a strong vintage for quality and quantity, we were able to be incredibly selective in 2017. There is a piece of every single vineyard designate site in this wine. The base is still Riddle Vineyard, located in a warmer northeastern corner of Occidental, complemented here by young vines from Summa, some clone 667 from Occidental Ridge, clone 828 from Silver Eagle and one used barrel of Platt. This blend gives a great insight into what the vintage provided on the true Sonoma Coast. Riddle is naturally red fruited so this wine comes across as a little more accessible than the more brooding 2016 version. Plum, mineral laced red fruit and mint jump out first balanced by a mouthwatering acidity that comes in a little earlier than normal.

Once again this wine comes from the original vines at Bearwallow. To us, this block has much more of a red fruited, savory character then the blocks we bottle as the Bearwallow vineyard designate. There’s a lot more give to this edition compared to the 2016. There is also less rusticity, replaced here by a more focused fruit quality. I'd put this on an equal qualitative footing with the Sonoma Coast, last year I thought the Sonoma Coast was more fully realized when comparing the two appellation offerings. Cut hay, rhubarb, white pepper and ripe tannin round out the generous palate. This is showing so well right now it's a joy to drink.

We love the wildness of the Anderson Valley wine profile. For all the talk about house styles in wineries, we feel this wine proves our wines are products of place first and foremost. We take grape growing very serious and we feel all the quality of our wines comes from paying very close attention in the vineyard. Truthfully, once the grapes hit the winery, we don't do that much to them. With this Rhys site, we never have much to contribute. Kevin and his team do such a great job of farming, we never have to ask for anything. We always head out to the site looking to make suggestions but usually we just take a quick walk, see that everything is perfectly dialed and then go have lunch. The two blocks that make up this bottling are especially fascinating in their clonal make up and corresponding cluster morphology. The wine these vines produce has a nice mix of red and purple fruit, white flowers, white pepper, baking spice, loam and licorice. The fresh fruit core has plenty of lift from acidity and fruit tannin. This wine, like the Platt and Occidental Ridge, will take a little time to unwind in bottle.

Writing this note is beginning to feel like writing the Summa Old Vines note. We have kind of run out of original things to say about the wine. This has been a consistently great site since we started with it in 2005. The color here is almost as saturated as Platt. Dark red berries, menthol, smoke, pennyroyal mint and violets provide the initial aromatic impression. The always low natural pH gives this wine a lightness that belies its initial intensity. We started using a little whole cluster in 2012 to cut into some of the candied mid-palate we perceived in the early vintages and here it not only provides cut but also texture. The mouthfeel takes on a tactile quality that balances the darker fruits that emerge on the finish. Abundant fruit tannin once again provides the structure and this wine, like the Platt, will take a few years in the cellar to reach full potential.

We are thrilled to offer our first vintage of Platt from what we feel is the best block in the vineyard. We had long admired Radio Coteau’s Platt offering (actually all of their wines) so we jumped at the chance to work with their block when it became available in 2017. The block is a little over an acre and a half and planted to the Calera clone. The wine has a density I have never really seen on the coast. The initial aromatic impression I only know how to describe as Burgundian reduction. It has a brooding, restrained perfume that we associate with high quality French Pinots. Though the color is dense, the wine is incredibly light on its feet veering from classic coastal notes of red berry, menthol, licorice and cloves to a tightly wound, structured finish. The tannin here is all fruit tannin and it is abundant. This wind buffered site produces berries with incredibly thick skins making for wines that will require some patience to unwind. I wouldn't quite classify this as an inward leaning wine but there is incredible potential here that will take a few years to come out.

We noticed a real shift in quality for this bottling in 2016. This new edition takes things up another notch with the addition of some Swan clone and the declassifying of all the clone 828 into the Sonoma Coast. There’s a refined element to the wine that wasn’t in the early versions and we appear to have solved some of the reduction issues with the inclusion of 15% whole cluster. Coming from a warmer spot in Occidental, this still features the darkest fruit profile of all the bottlings but balanced by the high natural acidity of the vintage. This new clonal mix provides a lighter palate impact without sacrificing any of the density of the experience. Black cherry, cola, mint and wild herbs run from start to finish in this wine making it a good candidate to be the early drinker in the line up. We do however expect the stuffing in this wine to help with aging, the 2009 is just now entering its mature drinking window.

The palate here is usually very deep compared to the Old Vines broad, initial appeal. With vine age, this wine is getting a little closer to its older sibling every year. It is still a more generous wine at release given its core of red fruit but all of the Old Vines elements are creeping into the palate. A savory edge has emerged the last few years that we think will only intensify with time. For all the dark cherry and plum, there are equal parts mint, licorice and pine resin. This bottling is still a more immediate drinker than Summa Old Vines but now at 20 years of vine age, the profile gap is closing. With more normal yields in 2017, we also were able to be more selective. Even so, we are happy to be able to actually offer some quantity of this wine to you. Most years, Mother Nature isn't so kind.

Here we could copy and paste our notes from the last few vintages. This wine has gotten so consistently good since Ulises Valdez and his crew took over farming. The color is more stable, aromatics are more explosive and the depth of the wine has increased starting with the 2014 vintage. The 2017 continues this trend and might be the best wine from this vineyard in that 2014-2017 vintage span. It would be easy to say every year that this is the best wine in the line up but I do truly believe it in ’17. It’s the completeness of the wine that best conveys this message. It will be one of those wines that drinks well now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now and until it decides to give out. The characteristics of the wine are pure Summa: red/orange fruit, cut hay, pine needles, purple flowers, crushed rock and wet earth. It has a lingering inner mouth perfume that pulls out more floral notes and a more pure red fruit profile. There’s the usual weightiness without heaviness at the finish complemented by the natural acidity of the site. As we move into the 40th year of these vines, we expect this lithe density to continue trending upward offering more mouthwatering power that only vine age can provide.

The big difference between this vintage and previous offerings is the distinctive character of the Platt Vineyard. It adds a muscat-y exotic quality that probably has as much to do with the vintage as it does the site. All three vineyards in the blend are Wente clone but they couldn’t be more different. The Riddle Vineyard fruit adds a stony minerality to the more tropical tinged Lucky Well and the slightly foxy, tea scented Platt. A tough combination to knit together but here it works. The wine is heavily stone fruited on the palate with a tiny bit of reduction on the end adding gunpowder and white chocolate. As it sits open, it actually tightens up a bit, a good sign for future development.

This starts out with an almost Sauvignon Blanc-like flintiness. Most of the character of the wine currently centers around texture. Unlike last year, this wine holds plenty in reserve with a bright, green fruited mid palate and firm acidity from start to finish. This has proven to be an interesting vineyard for us in the sense that no two vintages have tasted the same. Granted the sample size isn’t huge, but it has been an interesting ride from a winemaking perspective watching and waiting to see what comes of each year. We are a big fan of this year due to its raciness and lean, slightly reductive coastal character.

We are as excited about this first Chardonnay version of Bearwallow as we were its Pinot sibling last year. Not knowing what Anderson Valley Chardonnay was supposed to taste like only added to the intrigue as harvest 2016 approached. Coming from a sub-selection of the Wente clone, we had never seen such small berries. The resulting wine is very yellow fruit focused, following through with lemon oil, flint, apricot and pineapple. There’s a touch of brioche on the finish from the oak. As with all the other offerings, we do no lees stirring so the fruit here is precise and polished by acidity. If this is what Anderson Valley Chardonnay tastes like, we look forward to a very bright future.

It is nice to return to a normal quantity of this wine not only so we have something to sell but also so we have some to drink. This special site right across the street from Summa proves more interesting to us every year. We’d attribute that to better farming but also to vine age. Planted in 1990, we have begun to see “old vines” qualities come out in this wine the last several years. Consistency is probably the most valued attribute as this vineyard has weathered the droughts, deluges and heat of the last 5 years. Through it all, the wines produced from here continue to show site character first and vintage character second. The other quality we enjoy is one we mention frequently when talking about the Summa Old Vines bottling, weightiness without heaviness. There is an amazing palate presence in this wine but it never comes across as taxing. Freshness is probably the first thing we look for in our Pinots and Chardonnays and this wine always has that mouthwatering acidity that allows for multiple sips (or glasses or bottles). Given the proximity to the ocean, the Thieriot has a flavor note we refer to as sea spray complemented by citrus oil, crushed rock, honeysuckle and nectarine.

This is a bit darker than previous editions. I’d attribute this to a lower natural pH in the wine which allowed us to extract and stabilize more color. The vineyard blend here is changed as well with the addition of some Platt Vineyard fruit. 2016 being the first year we bought grapes from this esteemed site in Freestone, it may take us a couple years to best understand how to make it so we’ve added it here to preserve our one shot at a first impression. To this, we’ve added three clones from the Riddle Ranch off of Stoetz Lane in Occidental and some clone 828 from Silver Eagle, also in the town of Occidental. The broody character of Freestone marries well with the more fruit forward character of these two warmer Occidental sites. The dominant fruit here is pomegranate which provides both a concentrated and fresh fruit character. The freshness cuts some of the weight of the wine without making the wine come across as lean or angular. As usual, this appellation bottling provides a lot of good early drinking opportunity at a price that doesn’t elicit regret once the cork is pulled. 

We are really liking Anderson Valley these days. So much so, we’ve decided to offer our first ever appellation wine from this storied area. It is a nice counterpoint to our Sonoma Coast sites in that it focuses more naturally on the savory elements of Pinot Noir. White and black pepper, rhubarb and black cherry dominate the nose and palate. There is zero percent new oak on this wine which allows all the best attributes of the grape and the vintage to shine through. Fruit usually takes center stage even in the most coastal of California Pinots but here the rusticity of Anderson Valley provides a nice compliment to all the sunshine in the wine. We hope to see this cuvee grow in the coming years, adding another nice value bottling to the lineup that provides both higher than expected quality and a nice snapshot of the character of the vintage.

We think this complements the 2015 nicely, possibly improving on that edition through the addition of another block and a better understanding of the site. It still reminds us a bit of the Occidental Ridge bottling in its abundance of fruit tannin. We’ve now seen the 2015 unwind over the past year so we see this doing the same but maybe needing an additional year due to the vintage. The complexion is a lighter red, more akin to the Summa bottlings. The red fruit profile is very fresh focusing more on pomegranate and cranberry. Coming from the newer plantings on the property, the wine lack some of the more rustic character associated with older Anderson Valley bottlings. To repeat what we said last year, we are very excited to be working with this site. You’ll see an equally exciting Bearwallow Chardonnay offered in February.

This has a more pure red color than in years past. I’d attribute that to improved farming and the vintage in general. Nose is classic Summa though, full of Christmas spice, forest floor, clove, sandalwood and citrus peel. The acidity here is incredibly high, cutting through all the primary fruit this young vintage possesses. Structure comes up in the end as usual giving the impression the best years for this wine are well ahead of it. As good as we thought this bottling was the first 10 or so years we made it, the last three vintages have taken it to a level we didn’t see coming.

It’s nice to have a reasonable quantity of this wine again. With increased vine age, the regular Summa has taken on increased seriousness over the past few vintages. As the block creeps up on twenty years of age, it grows closer in character to the Old Vines bottling. It still is a bit deeper than that wine but it has become less linear and more broad at release. It may still not have the ethereal character of its sibling bottling but everything else is there: red/orange fruit, forest floor, clove, cut hay and sandalwood. Given the extreme location of this site, the fruit always has the thickest skins of all the vineyards we work with. The structure here is definitely a direct result of this site condition. This, like the Old Vines, sees more oak than the other single vineyard wines to help round out some of its youthful, angular nature. The crop level in 2016 allowed us to hang the block out a little longer then we could in 2015 producing what might be the most complete wine in the lineup.

This has joined the Summa bottlings as a flagship wine for us. Like those wines, we’ve kind of run out of things to say about it. This once again has the most fruit tannin of all the 2016 wines. The consistency of this vineyard continues to amaze us. The nose and palate is full once again of baking spice, pennyroyal mint, pine needles and red and black fruits. The abundant natural acidity adds a mouthwatering freshness that keeps the wine light without cutting into its concentration. The 10% whole cluster provides balance and a nice lift to the mid-palate. We’ve been making a concerted effort to try back vintages of all our wines the last few months and we’ve been amazed how well all vintages of Occidental Ridge have held up. The 2016 edition should continue this trajectory with a wine that drinks well now but has at least 15 years of cellaring ahead of it.

This bottling just keeps getting better. Being more selective with the blocks we use and slowly refining our winemaking, the wine has retained its warmer climate weight while getting more focused and losing its early reductive note. The whole cluster percentage has been bumped up closer to 20% to add some savory-ness and balance to the exuberant fruit character of the site. Black cherry, black tea and smoke dominate the palate with a small stem added herbal character creeping in on the finish. This carries a lot of primary fruit still which I think lends itself to cellaring. Sometimes in the wine world this is a little counter intuitive (aging fruit forward wines as opposed to structured wines) but in this case I think it will bring out much more complexity and balance over time. A recent bottle of our first ever Silver Eagle bottling, the 2009, bore this out with the wine showing nice tertiary herbal notes and a refreshing lightness that wasn’t there at bottling.

The composition of our 2016 Napa appellation wine is very similar to the 2015 version: clones 4 and 6 from Panek, the lower block of Lore, Pellet Vineyard in St Helena and two blocks from Kennedy Vineyard on Franz Valley School Road in Calistoga. Even with no Herb Lamb or Larkmead in the blend, the wine still provides an early drinking insight into the character of the four vineyard designated bottlings from 2016. If 2015 was defined by fruit sweetness, this vintage is framed by ripe tannin. The fruit is a bit darker as well, leaning toward black fruits and thus a more serious seeming offering. The various defining attributes of the vineyard sources pop up throughout while experiencing the wine. The abundant fruit and acid cut of Panek’s valley floor location, the all black fruit, crushed rock minerality of Lore’s east Oakville range, the loamy purple fruit of Pellet’s west St. Helena corridor and the blue fruited cool climate savory-ness of Kennedy’s western Calistoga siting. Completeness best describes the overall experience. Fruit, tannin and acidity all come in waves of equal proportion while the tasting experience follows seamlessly from start to finish.

Better informed farming continues to elevate not just the blocks in this bottling but also all the blocks we harvest at Panek. It makes our blending decisions more difficult each year but that extra work is certainly worth the extra quality in a wine like this 2016. The vineyard does best in muscular years so this version reminds me more of the 2013 as opposed to the 2014 or 2015. There’s more apparent fruit than in the 2013 to stand up to the structure of the vintage. This wine has calmed considerably during its last 6 or so months in barrel. It was a bit brooding for the first year of its life (odd for Panek) but that character only hinted at the concentration contained within. Now that it has unwound a bit, the trademark brown sugar note has emerged but here joined by a blackberry/cassis note. Loamy black soil, dried herbs and sweet tobacco complete the experience by adding a strong sense of varietal character to the mix, another hallmark of the vintage. This is a structured Panek for sure but with all other great 2016s, there is a sense of balance across all components of the wine that provides good early drinkability.

I love the old school Napa feel at the core of this wine. It smells and tastes like some of the great California wines from the 60s and 70s only with better farming and oak treatment. The first thing that greets you here is the savory character of the varietal. Due in equal parts to the greatness of the Larkmead site and the uniqueness of the Olmo clone, the modernness of the framing of this wine is meant only as a complement to its traditional center. Damp soil, bay leaves, black walnut and tobacco leaf begin the aromatic profile. Tasting it from tank a week before bottling, it reminded me of the mid-90s Araujo Eisele Vineyard wines. The palate takes on a dusty, minty character featuring plum, cedar and cassis. There’s a stuffing to this wine that has been lacking in years past. The vintage gets a lot of the credit for that. This is the new benchmark for our Calistoga bottling.

If you were to buy only one bottling from the offering, this would be the wine. We started with this eastern Oakville site in 2013 and the wine has gotten better every year. So far we haven’t touched on the color of the vintage. 2016 is one of the darkest years we have ever seen, right there with 2007 and 2013. The 2016 Lore is at another level even in a dense vintage. The wine has a saturated black hue that extends all the way to the rim where it begrudgingly turns to dark garnet. The nose doesn't wait for you to lift the glass, it fills the room as the wine is poured. All the structure of the site is present even in the aromatic. Abundant fruit buffers the structure which is a bit of an anomaly in the vintage. We feel this fruit has always been possible and now with a better handle on the farming, we have unlocked its potential. This vintage at Lore was plentiful so we had the ability to ferment several blocks separately giving us more to blend with and the ability to declassify barrels into the Napa bottling. All palate descriptors center on the black-fruited nature of the wine, licorice, creosote, blackberries and crushed rock fill out the middle and the finish. We’ve said it before, we feel very fortunate to be leasing this site. If this wine is an indicator of future potential, we hope to be here for a long time.

New to our lineup but certainly not new to the legacy of Napa, we are excited to be starting this relationship in such a great vintage. This is one of those wines we knew was destined for greatness when we pressed it. It was intensely aromatic in fermenter and colored up quickly. The palate held quite a bit in reserve while first in barrel taking on more of a linear profile. The last six months in barrel, the wine grew broader, opening up to grilled meats, garrigue, underbrush and blueberries. There is an exotic floral note on the nose that hints at the vineyard’s base of Howell Mountain location. Framing acidity keeps the wine from ever growing tiresome despite its density. There’s nothing that tastes quite like this storied site and we hope to continue to preserve and further the legacy of what Herb and Jennifer Lamb have created here.