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The
McDougall Ranch 2006 Pinot Noir headed the list of 108
wines in Wine & Spirits Year's Best Pinot:
...the pinot lives just above the fog,
where it grew in 2006 to optimal maturity - vibrant
in both color and flavor, dark and savory, with a lift
in the end. The flavor is somewhere between cherry and
pomegranate; the tannins taste salty, with mouthwatering
life. Catch a bottle now with plank-roasted salmon,
or five years from now with roast quail." 95 Points
Open
Your Wallet for Pinot Pleasure
Recently, the Prince
of Pinot offered this advice: Confiscate your wife’s
Nordstrom credit card and subscription to Vogue magazine,
cancel your kid’s cell phone account, discontinue
any superfluous insurance premiums, start riding your
bike to work, anything to save some money for the following
Pinot Noirs.
2006 Cargasacchi-Jalami
Vineyard Potbelly Block
This is a young wine and the nose is quite
subdued with subtle notes of red cherry, grass and sanded
wood. The lovely red Pinot fruits are accented with
herbal and woodsy flavors. Light in body and offering
some finesse and lively acidity, this is a good food
wine whose flavors trump the aromas at this stage.
2006 McDougall Ranch
Sonoma Coast
7-acre vineyard at 1,300 feet four miles from Pacific
Ocean. Rich cherry aromas with a little plum, rhubarb
and sawdust. Darker stone fruits are featured with a
charming earth and herbal note on the finish. Plenty
of dirt here. The texture is plush with gossamer tannins.
Alcohol is well-integrated. A clean, lingering finish
draws you to another sip.
2006 Weir Vineyard
Yorkville Highlands
Weir Vineyard is 15 acres which includes rare DRC and
Rochioli selections. Very enviable aromas of mineral-inflected
black cherry fruit, strawberry and cookie dough. Highly
likeable raspberry and strawberry fruit flavors with
a glamorous fruity aftertaste accentuated with spice
and a little white pepper. The fruity finish sneaks
up and expands in the mouth over a minute - very sexy.
The demure presentation of fruit is very attractive.
I like this wine a lot and it is admirable for its perfect
balance and purity. The best from this appellation I
have ever sampled. Hock your kids for this one.
2006 Fog-Eater Anderson
Valley
Made from two Anderson Valley vineyards heavily
influenced by coastal fog. This wine has the most flamboyant
aromatics of the lineup with spiced cherries, watermelon,
fresh sawn oak and a little barnyard.
Plenty of lovable Pinot fruits, fine-grained tannins
which could use some time to shed, and velvety texture.
Doesn’t have the twinkle that the Weir has, but
perfectly fine in its own right.
Sweet
currants, cherries, and a bit of sassafras and spice
comprise the medium ruby-colored 2005 Pinot Noir Weir
Vineyard (89 poins) from the Yorkville Highlands (a
site made famous by the well-known winery Williams-Selyem
in the Russian River). The wine is medium to full-bodied,
tightly knit, but beautifully pure and nicely concentrated.
It still needs another year or so to be fully expressive,
but this is a well-made Pinot Noir.
The 2005 Pinot Noir Fog-Eater (90 points) exhibits a
slightly deeper ruby color and a beautiful nose of blueberry,
raspberry, and cherry that soars from the glass. Elegant,
fresh, and vibrant, with the fruit clearly running the
show here, this wine can be drunk now or cellared for
3-4 years.
First
Team Pinot Noir All-Americans
2005 Drew Fog-Eater Anderson Valley
Drew 2005 Fog-Eater Pinot Noir
95 Points Editors Choice
"Really just about the perfect Anderson Valley
Pinot in terms of the beautifully crisp acidity, and
the way the wine blasts pure flavors of red cherries,
cassis and raspberries across the palate. With 30% new
French oak, this opulence is made more exotic with notes
of caramel, butterscotch, vanilla and toast. Combines
all this massive power with elegant finesse in a effortless
way."
Steve
Pitcher reviewed the "best presented" Pinot
Noirs at the 10th annual Anderson Valley Pinot Noir
Festival in Philo.
93 Drew, 2005 Fog Eater Pinot
Noir
Anderson Valley
From one of the chilliest microclimates in Anderson
Valley's Deep End, this exciting Pinot offers enticing
aromas of red cherry, strawberry and raspberry that
are pure and focused. Silky smooth and luscious with
medium tannins, the wine's complex flavors revolve around
spicy red fruit, blackberry and a hint of cedar that
linger long in the close.
James
Laube, in Wine Spectator Online tasted some
of our recently-released Pinot Noir wines:
Pinot Noir Yorkville Highlands
Weir Vineyard 2005 (92 points)
Medium ruby in color but intense and complex, with lively,
focused black cherry, wild berry and raspberry fruit
that dances on the palate. Just the right mix of acidity
and tannins. Drink now through 2011. 198 cases made.
—J.L.
Pinot Noir Anderson Valley Fog-Eater
2005 (90 points)
Ultraripe, with earthy, spicy wild berry, candied cherry
and raspberry fruit that's high-toned, clean and focused,
ending with a spicy, fruity aftertaste. Drink now through
2010. 225 cases made. —J.L.
Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast McDougall Vineyard
2005 (90 points)
Very ripe, with high-toned cherry, wild berry and raspberry
fruit that's plush and spicy, with a touch of cedar
and mineral on the finish, but it remains elegant. Drink
now through 2010. 75 cases made. —J.L.
Robert
Parker, Jr reviewed six Drew Syrah's in Issue 166 of
the Wine Advocate:
"A family-owned winery that previously
specialized in single vineyard cuvées from Santa
Barbara, Drew has moved its entire operation to California's
North Coast, but I believe that they intend to keep
their association with some of the South's top-notch
vineyards.
These six Syrahs all performed well.
My favorite of the group is the exquisite
2004 Syrah Larner Vineyard (94 points)
(an east-facing slope at the south end of the Ballard
Canyon in the Santa Ynez Valley). It boasts extraordinary
notes of acacia flowers, blueberry and blackberry liqueur,
terrific fruit on the attack, dense full-bodied, concentrated
flavors, moderately high tannins,
and a wonderful silkiness, richness and nobility.
Cellar it for another 1-2 years, and enjoy it over the
following decade.
Very impressive!
From a site on the west side of Paso
Robles, not far from Tablas Creek, the 2004
Syrah Hearthstone Vineyard (88 points) offers
notes of chocolate, plums, blackcurrants, spice and
earth. Its crisp, tart acidity suggests a cooler microclimate.
This distinctive, broad, muscular, surprisingly elegant
Syrah is difficult to evaluate.
Leaner, more chalky, and mineral-dominated,
the terroir-driven 2004 Syrah Morehouse Vineyard
(88 points) possesses a deep ruby/purple color
and good body.
It comes across as a French-styled offering from California.
The 2003 Syrah Rodney's-Larner's
Vineyards (90+ points) exhibits a dark purple
color along with beautiful aromas of blackberries, white
chocolate, flowers and a subtle resiny character. Rich
and concentrated, with sweet but moderate tannin, spice
and earth, it should evolve nicely for 5-10 years or
longer.
The dense ruby/purple-tinged
2003 Syrah Morehouse Vineyard (88 points) (located
off highway 246 between Santa Ynez and Solvang) reveals
an earthy/menthol character along with sweet black cherry
and blackcurrant fruit, good underlying crisp acidity
and fine elegance. This restrained elegant beauty will
drink well for 5-7 years.
The opaque purple-hued 2003 Syrah
Old Westy-Alisos Vineyard (92 points) reveals
an expansive, exuberant, sweet bouquet of blackberries,
blueberries, cherries, coffee, licorice and earth. With
terrific purity as well as richness, ripe, silky tannin,
and a savory, expansive finish, this seductive Syrah
should drink well for 7-8 years.
Eric Anderson of Grape-Nutz
tasted through 51 of the wines presented at the first
of the Santa Barbara County Futures tasting.
He ranked our wines high, granting A-‘s to each.
Click here
to read his review of our 2005 barrel sample Pinot Noirs.
James Laube in Wine Spectator
Online also reviewed the Futures wines
and rated the Gatekeepers 2005 Pinot Noir as a Solid
Buy, 89 to 91 points.
The June edition of The
Hanes Wine Review included a review of
wine AVA's, with a focus on Santa Rita Hills, and also
said:
"Drew Family is quietly rising up
the rungs in Santa Barbara towards consistently killer
level and their 2003 Syrah blended from different sources
and called “Six-Sense” is worth scouting
for."
PinotFile
(a unique free weekly online newsletter dedicated to
Pinot Noir) recently sampled Drew Pinot Noir wines.
"After tasting through the lineup,
I found the wines well-made and very representative
of Pinot Noirs from the Santa Rita Hills appellation.
They were deeply-colored, rich, and powerfully masculine
wines with plentiful dark berry flavors. The aromas
were full of crushed red and black fruits. All of them
had plenty of fine-grain tannins. If I had to pick a
favorite it would be the Gatekeepeers which seems more
multidimensional and complex and more approachable at
this point in time. I also revisited the 2002 Gatekeepers
Pinot Noir and found it very similar to the 2003 but
with softer tannins and a more silky mouth feel bestowed
by added aging."
"Although Sea Smoke is the darling
of the Santa Rita Hills at the moment, the Drew wines
match up very favorably."
Best of Show in Malibu!
Malibu Wine Classic, April
2, 2005
Our 2003 Syrah, Rodney’s and Larner, was recently
awarded the “Best of Show” designation from
the Malibu Wine Classic wine competition. This event
showcases the wines of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa
Barbara counties, with all proceeds from the competition
and event benefit Childhelp USA.
Taste California Review
from Futures
By Mark Storer, Taste California Travel, April 2005
“Highlights of the event included
Drew Family Cellars from Solvang, California. A week
ago, my friend Chef Chris Watson, now of Bodie’s
in Ojai, and his fiancée Erin came to our house
for dinner and brought a bottle of Drew's Cabernet Franc.
It was delicious, though I'm hard pressed to review
it here, as it's hard to recall exact tastes from a
week ago. But yesterday, I tasted Drew's Pinot Noir
and of all the many exciting offerings of Pinot that
day, including notable ones by Rusack, Babcock and Kenneth-Crawford,
Drew's stood out. Avoiding the big jammy, syrupy flavors,
this Pinot went for the light fruit with notes of red
cherry and plum. It was a juicy wine with an understated
oak finish that simply melted, velvety, on the palate.
Truly tremendous.”
Laube lauds our Gatekeepers
Pinot
Wine Spectator, March 18 2005
James Laube recently blind tasted many of the wines
being showcased at the Santa Barbara Futures tasting
at the Wine Cask. "The Pinots from the Santa Rita
Hills appellation are, in many instances, astonishing
and among the most exciting wines being made in California
today" he notes.
He goes on to say "Several other stellar Pinot
Noirs were the Drew Family Santa Rita Hills Gatekeepers
2004 (92-94 points), which features ripe, complex Pinot
flavors.." His specific tasting notes on the 2004
Gatekeepers Pinot Noir follow:
DREW FAMILY Pinot Noir Santa Rita
Hills Gatekeepers 2004
92-94 points
An awesome young wine.
Rich, smooth and polished, with a plush core of wild
berry, black cherry and blackberry fruit that gushes
with flavor and keeps a tight focus on the long, luxurious
finish. 350 cases made. --J.L.
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