2017 Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines

I’d put the 2017 Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines up there with any Pinot Noir coming out of California today. It’s a brilliant, magical, age-worthy wine from this tiny vineyard located far out on the Sonoma Coast. Similar to the straight Summa Vineyard yet with even more structure, it offers a complex bouquet of blackberries, black cherries, baking spiced, graphite, and earth, with an exotic, orange zest-like character developing with time in the glass. Full-bodied, concentrated, with both tannins and acidity, it needs 2-4 years of bottle age and should easily evolve for 15-20 years. Bravo! This cuvée comes from vines planted in 1978, spent 10 months all in new oak (of which it shows not a trace), and there are a scant 180 cases made.

The 2017 Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines is ravishingly beautiful from the very first taste. Exotic floral and blood orange notes give the Old Vines striking aromatic intensity. Bright, sensual and impeccable, the 2017 is arrestingly beautiful, even in the early going. As always, the Old Vines is ethereal and gracious in feel. Readers who enjoy Pinots with more flesh on the bones may prefer some of the other wines in the range. For me, the Old Vines has an extra degree of pure class. (AG)

The 2017 Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines is ravishingly beautiful from the very first taste. Exotic floral and blood orange notes give the Old Vines striking aromatic intensity. Bright, sensual and impeccable, the 2017 is arrestingly beautiful, even in the early going. As always, the Old Vines is ethereal and gracious in feel. Readers who enjoy Pinots with more flesh on the bones may prefer some of the other wines in the range. For me, the Old Vines has an extra degree of pure class.