2017 Fort Ross Pinot Noir Fort Ross Vineyard Fort Ross-Seaview Sonoma Coast 750 ml

It’s too risky: Too cold. Too steep. Too tough to farm. That’s what the old guard told Lester and Linda Schwartz when they purchased the site for Fort Ross Vineyard in 1988. But the couple carried on, undaunted.

Fast-forward three decades. Pinot powerhouses like RAEN, Gary Farrell, and Pahlmeyer flocked in, crafting $70+ bottles from Lester and Linda’s blustery section of the Sonoma Coast. Critical acclaim soon followed, and in 2012 Fort Ross-Seaview became an official AVA.

For more than 20 vintages, Fort Ross has been one of the region’s quality leaders, and their 2017 estate Pinot shows that the riskier the site, the bolder and more complex the wine can be. Grown just one mile from the Pacific, it’s teeming with vibrant fruit and wild energy, revealing depths of black tea, cherry cola, and damp earth, all carried on polished tannins that will allow it to age for a decade.

Fort Ross-Seaview is still wild—only 2% of its total acreage is planted to vines—and full of tricky, steep pitches and dense forests. To wrangle this terroir into the bottle, Fort Ross hired Bernardus and Peter Michael alum Jeff Pisoni. Jeff’s team hand-harvested the Pinot at night to preserve its scintillating freshness. He aged the wine for ten months in 35% new French oak, imbuing a rich structure and wonderful spice note.

The result epitomizes cool-climate Pinot from the extreme Sonoma Coast—and it's one of Fort Ross-Seaview’s standout values.