Description
Winemaker Notes
Perfumed purple violets, pomegranate blossom, give way to a “vinous” sur bois earthiness before a nice kick of feral blackberry, ripe blueberry, and fig jam fruitiness proves this wine is Pinot noir centric after all. Aromatically, this wine would stump the best of trained sommeliers.
The palate is not just big, but BIG! Got to love the huge tannin grip from skins, seeds, and stalks (stems) in this wine. Black cherry fruit is almost over- shadowed by a spice rack of Mediterranean Italian spice mix, cardamon, forest floor, browned stems, and wet slate minerality. This is a robust wine from start to long, long finish.
Professional Ratings
95 Tasting Panel
Winemaker Rollin Soles hails from Australia, where grape stems are referred to as “stalks”; an illustration of him being pursued, or stalked, by the thunderbird that represents the winery appears on the label of this wine. To produce it, Soles destems whole berries into small fermenters for a ten-day soak while aging the removed stems separately for seven days under inert gas; the latter are then hand-punched into the fermenters and punched down twice a day before the gently pressed juice is transferred to French oak and matured for nine months. The resulting wine is an intensely bright, floral beauty. Cherry bark, dried roses, violets, and a zing of pink peppercorns flourish on the nose and palate. Wild strawberry, cinnamon, and tilled soil are enveloped in a distinct, stemmy mouthfeel.
93 Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir The Stalker is darkly floral and exotic in the glass as a whiff of incense and cedar shavings combines with spiced orange peel and balsamic cherries. It sweeps across the palate with textures of pure silk, showing a more graceful style and a pleasantly bitter tinge of cedar that complicates its tart red berry fruit. Grippy and long on the finish.
91 James Suckling
Fragrant nose of rose petals, raspberries, pomegranates and rhubarb. Very fresh, with a medium body and chalky tannins. Nicely mineral at the end.
90 Jeb Dunnuck
Taking on more layers, the 2021 Pinot Noir The Stalker is a youthful saturated ruby and opens to aromas of sandalwood, preserved cherry, and anise. Medium to full-bodied, with ripe tannins and mouth-filling fruit, it‘s a generous wine, with mineral accents and a great finish.
90 Wine Spectator
Lean in style and rather briary, with sleek raspberry, underbrush and savory mushroom flavors that build tension toward medium-grained tannins. Drink now through 2031. 1,370 cases made.
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