Small Vines TBH Vineyard Pinot Noir 2017
- Vinous
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Wine
Spectator -
Robert
Parker
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
This exquisite Pinot Noir, from obsessively tended vines, expresses precision and a distinct sense of place. This amazing site is expressing itself with purity of fruit, great natural acidity, satisfying tannins, minerality and even some distinct savory characteristics.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2017 Pinot Noir TBH Vineyard is a very pretty wine built on lifted aromatics from the Calera and Swan clones that make up the core of blend. Crushed flowers, sweet red berries, blood orange, mint, exotic spice and star anise are all beautifully lifted. Readers will find a subtle, understated Pinot built on class.
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Wine Spectator
This offers a crisp mix of dried red fruit and spice flavors, with minerally verve. Savory midpalate, offering a finish that lingers with forest floor notes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir TBH Vineyard opens broody with blackberries, black cherries, cranberry and rhubarb with accents of Earl Grey tea leaves. The palate is light to medium-bodied with bright, crunchy fruit, great freshness and an earth-laced finish.
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Robert
Parker
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Robert
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Only in high-school, Paul started as a bus-boy learning about wine from passionate restaurateurs. He embraced wine with an unquenchable desire to read and taste everything he could-and eventually worked his way up to the assistant wine buyer position at John Ash and Company (in 1993 until 95). As a very young wine steward, he was given many opportunities to taste both California classic wines and wines from all over the world. One night, his life would change forever, when a person dining alone offered him a taste of a very rare Burgundy. This ethereal experience, with one of the world’s greatest wines, sent him on a quest for more knowledge and forever fueled his drive to make captivating wines like this. He launched into self-study, and soon discovered that some of the greatest Pinot Noirs in the world come from a mature, small vines.
Soon after this experience, Paul and Kathryn Sloan met and fell in love in nature. As adventurous partners in rock climbing and mountain biking, we took a sabbatical and traveled the country only to return home to one of the most beautiful places on earth, Sonoma County, California. It is here, where Paul’s family has been for three generations (and now four), that we embarked upon even bigger adventures. Paul returned to college to get his Viticulture degree, and simultaneously went to work for one of the most respected winegrowers in the county, Warren Dutton of Dutton Ranches.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Perhaps the most historically significant appellation in Sonoma County, the Sonoma Valley is home to both Buena Vista winery, California's oldest commercial winery, and Gundlach Bundschu winery, California's oldest family-run winery.
It is also one of the more geologically and climactically diverse districts. The valley includes and overlaps four distinct Sonoma County sub-appellations, including Carneros, Moon Mountain District, Sonoma Mountain and Bennett Valley. With mountains, benchlands, plains, abundant sunshine and the cooling effects of the nearby Pacific, this appellation can successfully produce a wide range of grape varieties. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gewürztraminer, and most notably, Zinfandel all thrive here. Ancient Zinfandel vines over 100 years old produce small crops of concentrated, spicy fruit, which in turn make some of the Valley's most unique wines. These can also be made as “field blends” (wines made from a mix of grape varieties grown in the same vineyard) along with Petite Sirah, Carignan and Alicante Bouschet.