2014 Pinot Noir

The Franscioni family has been living and farming in the Salinas Valley for over a century and focused on the traditional vegetable crops of the region until Gary Franscioni, motivated by his childhood friend Gary Pisoni, made the move into grape-growing by planting a vineyard around his home on the hills above the valley. He named it Rosella’s, after his wife, and it now encompasses 50 acres, 40 of them Pinot Noir, mostly Pisoni clone, and 10 more of Chardonnay and a bit of Syrah. The 38-acre hilltop Sierra Mar Vineyard, planted in 2007, produces mostly Pinot Noir but also highly promising Chardonnay, Syrah and Viognier. In addition, the Franscionis are partners with the Pisonis in the 50-acre Garys’ and 35-acre Soberanes Vineyards, which were planted in 1996 and 2008, respectively.

The first ROAR wines were made in 2001 with Adam Lee at Siduri and, as Gary Franscioni says, “they were big, really big”—not unlike the style that Lee favored at that time. But, as with so many wineries in California, Franscioni’s wines (now made by Scott Shapley at the ROAR winery in San Francisco) have evolved steadily toward greater finesse and these 2014s show that characteristic clearly. Make no mistake, they’re still powerful and they still deliver a serious payload of flavor, but compared to the bruisers of the early 2000s here, these are relative ballerinas.