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 Chardonnay The Estate has a pretty perfume of grilled peaches, flaky pastry, clover honey, toast and matchstick. The palate balances concentrated, savory flavors with bright acidity, and it has a long, honey-nut finish.
The 2021 Chardonnay The Estate is delightfully decadent and almost feels like a guilty pleasure—it's so packed with flavor! It has gregarious aromatic layers of warm peach, summer honey, candied citrus and wafts of allspice. The medium-bodied palate is luxuriously satiny and features expansive, concentrated flavors. Despite its generosity, it maintains balance with bright acidity, and it has an epically long finish.
The 2020 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard is fragrant and layered with lemon verbena, toasted brioche, and white peach. It has detail and definition in its structure, with refreshing acidity and a stony, lifted finish. Drink it over the next 10 or more years.
A beautiful, Burgundian nose of orchard fruits, white flowers, chalky minerality, and honeysuckle emerge from the 2019 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard, a riveting, pure, flawlessly balanced Chardonnay that shines on all accounts. Picking up a kiss of green almond and toast with time in the glass, it has beautifully integrated acidity, a layered, rich yet light on its feet mouthfeel, and a great finish. This is just about as good as it gets in 2019 with regards to Chardonnay. Give bottles a year or two in the cellar and enjoy through 2032.``
"The 2018 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard opens with explosive perfume! Gunflint, spring honey, white flowers and salted almonds mingle over rich quince paste and warm apple fruit. The palate is equally as compelling, its powerful, rich layers of flavor packed into an ultra silky frame, offering bright pops of juiciness and a finish that goes on forever. Wow! It's stunning now but may improve with more time in bottle."
“It’s a riveting Chardonnay that offers notes of caramelized citrus, honeysuckle, toasted brioche, and scorched earth. Rich, medium to full-bodied, with bright acidity, this beautiful, layered, elegant wine builds with time in the glass. Elegance and purity are the buzzwords, but it has depth and length.”
Starting with the Chardonnay, the 2016 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard is an extraordinary effort as well as world-class.
Offering an ultra-pure bouquet of white flowers, tangerine, crushed citrus, and hints of brioche and marzipan, it hits the
palate with medium-bodied richness, a seamless, elegant texture, riveting acidity, and a great, great finish. It’s certainly one
the gems in the great vintage and is going to benefit from a year or two of bottle age and keep for 15+ years.
The 2015 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard has an intense nose of pineapple, guava and ginger with honeysuckle, marzipan, cashews and brioche. The medium-bodied palate is incredibly taut for such a gregarious nose with wonderful tension framing the pronounced tropical flavors beautifully, finishing with lingering savory notes and a gorgeous creamy texture. 800 cases were made.
This is yet another stunning wine from this site, guided by the capable hands of Winemaker and Viticulturalist Bibiana González Rave, who has coaxed from it beguiling layers of complex concentration and sublime notions of tang and salt. The only white from a sea of Pinot Noir grown here, it speaks to what the extreme Sonoma Coast can bring to the variety—a celebration of lemon zest, crisp apple and brioche delicately wrapped in minerality. "Editor's Choice"
The 2013 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard has a youthful nose of pink grapefruit, white peaches and lemon curd with honeyed toast, beeswax and coriander seed. The palate is very finely crafted, tightly knit and still quite primary, revealing vibrant citrus and stone fruit flavors and a satiny texture, finishing long and minerally.
Editor's Choice. Estate grown, this is the only white from the Wayfarer Vineyard out on the Fort Ross-Seaview coast, and it’s stunning. Culled from several distinct blocks planted to a handful of clones, including Mt. Eden and Old Wente, the aromas are pretty in orange blossom and peach, the body expansive and flinty. Succulent, the wine offers a lot of layered complexity, making it enjoyable now and through 2020-2022.