Cleo Pahlmeyer's Pinot Passion Project Has Become the Main Attraction
On the West Sonoma Coast frontier, Wayfarer's fruit-driven Pinot Noirs stand out
On the West Sonoma Coast frontier, Wayfarer's fruit-driven Pinot Noirs stand out
These are wines of amazing grace without sacrificing structure and layers.
Vinous Live! with Antonio Galloni and Cleo Pahlmeyer
The 2022 Pinot Noir Paige’s Ridge is outrageously beautiful. Sweet, perfumed, and exceptionally gorgeous, the 2022 soars out of the glass with breathtaking aromatic intensity. The 2022 is pliant and layered in feel, with stunning balance.
The 2021 Pinot Noir Paige’s Ridge has an alluring perfume of strawberry and raspberry jam, hibiscus, moss and potpourri, continuing to release detailed, spicy accents with each return to the glass. It's light-bodied yet generously flavored, with a chalky, seamless structure and a long, latent finish. It has youthful, glossy oak spices and blossoms dramatically with time in the glass. It will benefit from a few years in the bottle.
The 2019 Pinot Noir Paige’s Ridge was made with 667 clone fruit and aged in 50% new French oak. Medium ruby-purple, it opens with delicate floral perfume—dried violets and lavender—with a plush, inviting core of spicy red berry preserves. The palate is seamless and packed with an array of red fruits and sparks of spice, stone and flowers. It finishes very long. It's a stunning Pinot Noir for its pure, intense flavors and lifted, ethereal structure and will show best after another 2-3 years' maturation.
"Almost opaque ruby/purple, it delivers a monster-sized bouquet of black raspberries, orange blossom, Asian spices, and graphite. With plenty of background oak, full-bodied richness, incredible purity of fruit, and a great, great finish, this is certainly not for the Burg-only crowd out there, yet the texture, balance, and power paired with elegance is straight-up sensational. Drink bottles any time over the coming decade or so."
"The 2017 Pinot Noir Paige's Ridge is a two-barrel lot and also the smallest-production wine in the range. Fermenting in oak yields a Pinot built on texture and explosive richness. This is a pretty extroverted style for the Sonoma Coast, but it works beautifully. A rush of red cherry jam, chocolate, spice and new leather builds into the potent, layered finish. Racy, opulent and hedonistically seductive, the Paige's Ridge is a rock-star. I absolutely loved it."
“From a single block and single clone (clone 667), the 2016 Pinot Noir Paige’s Ridge is the tiniest production cuvée with only 40 cases made. Completely de-stemmed and brought up in just 50% new French oak, it offers more richness and flesh, with lots of cassis, toasted spice, black raspberries, and candied flowers. Deep, full-bodied, incredibly textured and perfectly balanced, it’s another extraordinary Pinot Noir from this great site and great winemaker.”
Floral in aromas and yet darkly savory in cherry and clove, this full-bodied wine holds layered acidity and balanced oak at its core. It hails from one block of the vineyard and spent time in entirely new French oak. Baked raspberry tart finds a happy companion in the richness of maple and velvety tannin. Drink now through 2024.
The nose is gorgeously deep and complex showing licorice, blackberry, cherry, mint, red apple and rhubarb. The palate entry shows polished flavors of apple, cherry and spice with plenty of vitality and structure. Fall 2015 release. Drink 2017 – 2024.
From one block of the estate vineyard planted exclusively to Dijon clone 667, Paige’s is deep and dark in color, intense in oak and earthiness, almost a quarter of it undergoing whole cluster fermentation. As intense on the palate as it is darkly hued, it offers brambly blackberry and dark cherry around a core of wild Tahitian vanilla and cinnamon-cardamom spice.