Laughinghouse Pinot Noir 2013
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Wong
Wilfred
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
The 2013 Laughinghouse Pinot Noir is an enticing wine that simply drinks well. Ripe fruit in the aroma and layered in textures, this wine is a perfect match with roast tenderloin of pork. Drinks well now. (Tasted: July 28, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
Claire Silver is a long time wine industry professional based in Santa Rosa. After working many years in the trade, especially in New York and New Jersey, she and her family moved to California in 2013. Claire works as a negociant in the most traditional sense, in that she buys barrels of unfinished wines and completes them, fixing the blends and the balance, then bottling. The object is to produce a very fine wine at a fair price.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Home to a diverse array of smaller AVAs with varied microclimates and soil types, Sonoma County has something for every wine lover. Physically twice as large as Napa Valley, the region only produces about half the amount of wine but boasts both tremendous quality and variety. With its laid-back atmosphere and down-to-earth attitude, the wineries of Sonoma are appreciated by wine tourists for their friendliness and approachability. The entire county intends to become a 100% sustainable winegrowing region by 2019.
Sonoma County wines are produced with carefully selected grape varieties to reflect the best attributes of their sites—Dry Creek Valley’s consistent sunshine is ideal for Zinfandel, while the warm Alexander Valley is responsible for rich, voluptuous red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are important throughout the county, most notably in the cooler AVAs of Russian River, Sonoma Coast and Carneros. Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Syrah have also found a firm footing here.