2016 Rivers-Marie Silver Eagle Vineyard Pinot Noir

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.