The 2016 Rogers Creek Pinot Noir is extremely dark and viscous, hinting at this wine’s lovely depth. Brown baking spice and plum aromas leave a distinct first impression. On the palate, soft with velvety tannins add length and definition to tart cherry and berry flavors that linger throughout a long, satisfying finish.
The fruit for this wine was sorted and gently destemmed into small open-top fermenters, using state-of-the-art equipment and procedures to avoid any pumping of must. Inoculation with select yeast strains followed a three-day cold soak, and the caps were managed with a combination of pump-overs and punch-downs. After 10 months of aging in French oak barrels, 40% of which were new, we bottled the wine on August 17th, 2017.
The 2016 vintage started out with an early bud break followed by a warm growing season. Just when we were about to start picking we had a cool spell in late August. This helped slow things down and spread out the harvest. Our block of Rodgers Creek is planted to the Pommard clone. The grapes were harvested by hand in the cool early morning hours of September 7th, 2016.
The grapes for this Pinot Noir came from a vineyard called Rodgers Creek, which is perched at an elevation of 1,000 feet overlooking the city of Petaluma. It lies near the Rodgers Fault, which it is named after. This rugged, west-facing site benefits from rocky volcanic soils, and the steady cooling winds that flow through the Petaluma Gap.