El Pino Club The Cusp Pinot Noir 2019
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Wilfred
Wong -
Wine
Spectator
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Supple Pinot Noir from Sonoma County’s uncontested cool-climate capital, the Russian River Valley. The Cusp fully embraces the tension between Russian River fog and Sonoma sunshine. A proudly new-world Pinot, with a full, round body; beautifully balanced and unexpectedly complex.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2019 El Pino Club, The Cusp Pinot Noir, is enticing and slightly elevated on the palate. TASTING NOTES: This wine offers aromas and flavors of slightly smoked meat, and bright red fruits. Pair it with grilled salmon fillets. (Tasted: March 24, 2022, Rutherford, CA)
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Wine Spectator
Delivers accents of cinnamon to the medium-weight raspberry pastry and boysenberry flavors, which glide across the palate. The toasty finish turns creamy, with hints of allspice and dried wild herbs. Drink now
Other Vintages
2021-
James
Suckling
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Wilfred
Wong -
Wine
Spectator -
Wine
Enthusiast
El Pino Club is for Pinot fanatics: people who love this fickle, funky grape that defies expectations and always surprises. The curated collection of exceptional wines in El Pino Club hail from the coastal corners of the world where the grape thrives, allowing Pinot lovers to see the world through the eyes of this wonderful little grape. To fully appreciate the range of Pinot Noir requires a journey, and the charismatic Pinot Noirs that make up El Pino Club are ready and willing guides through the world’s most acclaimed AVAs. To capture the fullest expression of terroir, each wine is entrusted to a winemaker expert in the nuances of their region’s Pinot Noir. The winemakers in ‘the Club’ are given creative license to artfully blend clones selected from their best estate vineyard blocks. Their passion and individual winemaking styles result in site-specific wines that showcase the best of their region’s Pinot Noir.
Every wine in El Pino Club is a unique and lovably- quirky character, bursting with personality, and undeniably true to itself. As individual cast members they are an ode to the lands and hands that produce them, and as an ensemble, they celebrate the full range and charm of this legendary varietal.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.