2016 Pahlmeyer Wayfarer Vineyard Pinot Noir The Traveler

From blocks 9 and 18 planted to the proprietary suitcase clone, the 2016 Pinot Noir The Traveler is pale to medium ruby-purple colored and offers a quiet intensity of a myriad of red fruit and floral notes: cranberries, Bing cherries and raspberry leaves with hints of roses, lilacs, mandarin peel, allspice and fragrant underbrush. Medium-bodied, very fine, wonderfully refreshing and bursting with red berry and floral layers, it finishes very long and very minerally.

My favorite in the lineup was the 2016 Pinot Noir The Traveler, but these are all pretty much desert island wines. Coming from a suitcase clone rumored to be from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and planted in 2001, it was completely destemmed and spent 15 months in 83% new French oak, which is the most new oak of any of the Pinot Noirs. Sensational notes of passion fruits, blood orange, black raspberries, spice, and crazy floral notes give way to medium to full-bodied Pinot Noir that’s just about as good as it gets. With perfect tannins, a seamless, weightless texture, no hard edges, and a blockbuster finish, this finesse-driven, elegant Pinot Noir needs to be tasted to be believed. Hats off to Bibiana Gonzalez Rave. The big news at Wayfarer is the moving on of star winemaker Bibiana González Rave to focus on her own label and assistant winemaker Todd Kohn taking over the helm. Todd has been with Wayfarer since 2013 and certainly, along with Cleo Pahlmeyer, the vineyard and estate are in talented hand. All these 2016s were made by Bibiana, and as the notes and scores show, they’re truly sensational, world class wines.