2018 Pinot Noir Savoy

I was deeply impressed with this range from Eric Sussman and Davida Ebner. Tasting a bit later in the year gave me an opportunity to sample two vintages in bottle, which is not the case in most years, when I visit earlier. The bottled 2018s capture all the promise I saw last year. It is simply a fabulous vintage for Radio-Coteau. In 2019 I think the Chardonnays are stronger than the Pinots, which is consistent with my feeling about the vintage in Sonoma more broadly. I find the 2019s Pinots a bit light, despite the smaller crop that year vis-à-vis 2019. The 2019s were also vinified with more whole clusters and with lighter extractions overall, so separating the vintage effect from a natural evolution in winemaking is not easy.

My tasting at Radio-Coteau with Eric Sussman and Davida Ebner was among the highlights of my January trip to Sonoma. Often when producers make a wide range of wines, there are different levels of success throughout the range. Very few wineries excel at seemingly everything. Radio-Coteau is among them. Every wine is just spot-on. As always, the approach centers around sourcing fruit from a handful of top sustainably-farmed sites and working with minimal intervention in the cellar. That means indigenous fermentations, no SO2 until after malolactic fermentation and no racking until bottling. Eric Sussman told me he used a little less whole cluster in 2018 than 2017 because the stems were not quite as ripe and he did not want to push the stem character too much. In tasting, the 2018s have the signatures of a long cool growing season with no shocks, the most important being striking aromatic intensity and perfectly ripe tannins. The bottled 2017s turned out as I had expected and are among the most compelling wines of that year.