2021 Rivers-Marie Summa Vineyard Pinot Noir21RMSVPN750

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.