2017 Willow White

In just a few short years, Don Burns has pushed his Turtle Rock wines into the upper echelon of Paso Robles. This year’s set of releases matches up nicely against the work of any other winery in the region. Burns is able to source fruit from some of the Central Coast’s most vaunted sites, including the James Berry, G2 and Adelaida vineyards. The emphasis here is on producing wines of energy and fine detail, aided by fruit grown in the cool, limestone-rich soils of the Willow Creek and Templeton Gap sub-districts on the west side of Paso Robles. Burns also works extensively with whole-cluster fermentations and raises his red wines in large-format oak barrels of varying age, mostly neutral (the only 100% new oak wine here is the G2 Syrah “because it can handle it”), which Burns thinks helps to emphasize the wines’ purity and expressiveness, even when they are young. It’s also worth noting that pricing here is extremely fair given the quality.