Spring Release Wester Reach Pinot Noir
2020

Winemaker’s Notes

Our 2020 Pinot Noir wines remind me most closely of one of my favorite recent vintages: 2015. These two seasons produced small crops that ripened early at moderate sugar levels but with full vine and grape maturity—all the ingredients for intensity, complexity, and longevity in bottle. Our new Wester Reach bottling is a beautifully balanced and highly perfumed classical Russian River Pinot Noir - quintessential DuMOL.

Our collection of Estate vineyards—our finest sources—dominate this five-vineyard blend. Flax overlooking the river on Westside Road is red fruited, structured, and full-bodied. A trio of Green Valley sites build the core of the wine. DuMOL Estate offers ripe black cherry fruits and woodsy complexity; MacIntyre is bright, floral, and tangy with purple fruit purity; Dutton layers-in broad soft texture and generous breadth. Our longtime Occidental Road vineyard, further east, deepens the wine with truffley sweetness and concentrated creamy red fruits.

The aromas are full of vitality: bright, intense, and pure: red and black cherry, and fresh raspberry, with tangy orange zest lift. There’s a sappy, freshly picked character to the wine’s fruit center - wild berries, spiced plum, and underbrushy sweetness. The wine deepens and expands across the palate as its layers unfold then changes course becoming sleek and mineral with a fine line of focused acidity and gravelly tannin. There's a lovely echo of deep fruit on the finish. This is a wine that you can enjoy on release, but it also offers the potential for a decade of positive aging in bottle.

Andy Smith