2015 Melville Pinot Noir Estate Santa Rita Hills

Pinot Noir - 750ML
$34.94
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REVIEWS

WE 93 W&S 91 JD 90 WA 90
WE 93

Wine Enthusiast, December 2018

Red cherry, dried rose petal and cinnamon-spiced melon show on the unique and alluring nose in this bottling. The palate offers a complex blend of earth and fruit, combining sour cherry with wild thyme, red flowers and...
W&S 91

Wine & Spirits, October 2018

Open this bottle and you’ll find a lot of smoky oak, but there’s good material underneath, apparent in the undertow of fruit. Give it air and you’ll have a cool, rich pinot, its tannins a contrast of gritty and plush...
JD 90

jebdunnuck.com, October 2018

The 2015 Pinot Noir Sta. Rita Hills is the largest production cuvée of the estate and it's a year in, year out value. The 2015 (this was also reviewed last year) is a spice-filled, cherry, and forest floor-scented effort...
WA 90

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, January 2018

The 2015 Pinot Noir Estate reveals aromas of red cherry, fresh herbs and strawberry preserve, followed by a supple, medium-bodied, succulent palate with a saline, savory finish. Fermented with some whole bunches and...

WINE DETAILS

Color & Type Red
Varietal Pinot Noir
Country USA
Region California
Sub-region Central Coast
Appellation Santa Barbara
Sub-appellation Santa Rita Hills
Vintage 2015
Size 750ML
Percent alcohol 14%
Closure Cork

In 1996, founder Ron Melville's desire to grow cold-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Syrah brought him to the Sta. Rita Hills where he established his winery, situated amongst the beautiful rolling hills where the grapes are grown exclusively in their three estate vineyards.

Melville currently has 120 acres under vine. The soil is mostly Lompoc dune sand, interspersed with clay loam and shallow hard pans of Monterey shale. The estate currently has 16 clones of Pinot Noir, 9 clones of Syrah, and 6 clones of Chardonnay - all on a variety of low-vigor rootstocks. All blocks are fermented in small lots and isolated through their entire period of elevage, which provides Melville’s team with an ongoing exhibition of how they can fine tune vineyard practices in order to achieve the most unmanipulated and site-specific wines possible.

Melville “grows their flavors,” using no new oak and adding only yeast.

This is 100% Melville fruit from their Sta. Rita Hills estate, and is a collection of 16 pinot noir clones. 40% of the fruit was fermented as whole-clusters with 60% gently de-stemmed in small (1.5 ton) open-top fermenters. Total skin and stem contact averages 30 days (7 day cold soak, 2 + weeks of fermentation and 1 + week extended maceration). From the press, the wine is transferred directly into neutral barrels (10+ year old French oak), where it remains sur lie without sulfur until June, when it is gently racked for the first time and prepared for bottling in August.