Joseph Phelps Freestone Vineyards Pinot Noir 2014
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Suckling
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Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A layered and fruity red with strawberry and lemon rind character. Medium to full body, fresh and fruity finish. Very exciting.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
More raspberries, floral notes, herbs and underbrush appear in the more complex, still not bottled 2014 Pinot Noir Freestone Vineyard. This is a delicious wine, where some whole clusters were used, giving the wine an earthy underbrush note, but the raspberry fruit is obvious and jumps from the glass. This should drink nicely in its first 5-7 years of life.
Range: 90-92 -
Wine & Spirits
The Phelps family was one of the first to bring pinot noir to the cool hills around Freestone, when they planted on the site of an old dairy farm in 1999. Those vines grew a 2014 that smells delicious, like bay leaves and crushed wild blackberries. The fruit has a spicy verve that holds out against the constricting grip of the oak—it’s a powerful coastal pinot noir to age for five years or more.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Balanced from start to finish, the lively 2014 Joseph Phelps Freestone Vineyards Pinot Noir dances on the palate with lovely precision and style. The wine's tart strawberry and wet stone flavors pair it well with lightly-seared lamb chops. (Tasted: February 16, 2017, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine
Joseph Phelps Vineyards is a family-owned winery committed to crafting world class, estate-grown wines. Founded in 1973 when Joe Phelps purchased a former cattle ranch near St. Helena in the Napa Valley, the winery now controls and farms nearly 375 acres of vines on eight estate vineyards in St. Helena, the Stags Leap District, Oakville, Rutherford, Oak Knoll District, Carneros and South Napa Valley. In 1999, the Phelps family added 100 acres of vineyard property near the town of Freestone on the Sonoma Coast, where Phelps now grows Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Phelps is best known for its flagship Napa Valley blend of red Bordeaux varietals, Insignia, first produced in 1974. Awarded Wine Spectator's "Wine of the Year" in 2005, Insignia is widely regarded as a qualitative benchmark for California winemaking.
The Sonoma Coast AVA is large in area but, not counting overlapping regions like Russian River Valley, only has a few thousand acres of grapevines—and it’s no wonder. Much of the region is rugged and not easily accessible. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean’s fog and cool breezes limits the varieties that can be cultivated, but it proves to be an ideal environment for high quality Pinot Noir.
Since fog is a frequent fact of life here, as are heavy marine layers that sometimes bring rain, the best vineyards are wisely planted above the fog line, on picturesque ridges that capture enough sun to provide even ripening. That, with the overnight drop in temperature that reliably preserves acidity, results in fine expressions of Pinot Noir that often receive tremendous critic and consumer praise alike, and are often in high demand.