California North Coast: Eyes Wide Open

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | JANUARY 20, 2022

As is our custom, we present our reviews of new releases from Sonoma County and neighboring North Coast appellations in a series of installments over the coming weeks. This report focuses on the 2020s and the 2019s, which I first covered in last year’s article. There’s a lot to talk about, so grab a glass and settle in. This might take a while.

2020 – Here We Go

The first of the 2020s are hitting the market. Before we get into the details, no, 2020 is not a total write-off, and yes, there are some outstanding wines for readers to consider. But – and it is a big but – 2020 is a wine-by-wine proposition with a very high degree of variability, even within specific producers’ portfolios. It is a vintage to approach with extreme caution. 

I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, so the reviews in this report represent how the wines show today. Of course, that might change over time, which is one of the great frustrations with this vintage, as I explain in further detail below. I have kept drinking windows narrow, not because the wines won’t age – some will – but because I think it is only prudent to be checking in on these wines in the cellar pretty frequently. I would not be planning on long-term cellaring given the significant uncertainty surrounding this vintage. Some of the views herein might change or evolve as I taste more wines.

Two-thousand twenty is an especially difficult vintage for Pinot Noir. Many wines will not be bottled at all. Mark Aubert opted to use his best fruit for the appellation-level Pinots, so there are no single-vineyard Pinots. Ted Lemon will bottle only his Mays Canyon Pinot among the Sonoma vineyard-designates and smaller amounts than normal of his Anderson Valley Pinots. At Rivers-Marie, there are no Sonoma Pinots, only the Bearwallow, which is also from Anderson Valley, one of the brighter spots of the vintage. At Occidental, on the other hand, Steve and Catherine Kistler plan to bottle all of their 2020 Pinots, in smaller volumes than normal, but all the wines.

Chardonnay largely fared better because of its thicker skins, the timing of harvest and the fact that Chardonnay is vinified without skin contact. Even so, winemakers were pretty cautious and pressed the wines lightly. As readers will see from the notes in this report, even the Chardonnays that have been or will be bottled present quite a bit of variability.

This stretch of vineyards off Bodega Highway includes some of the top sites in the West Sonoma Coast, including Platt, the Occidental ranches, Joseph Phelps Quarter Moon, and several more recently planted vineyards.