2021 Littorai Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard

The 2021 Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard is a potent, brooding wine. Black cherry, licorice, spice and dried herbs are all dialed up. This is an especially dark, somber style of Savoy—the result of heat stress and low yields that concentrated fruit as well as tannin.

The 2021 Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard is a total knock-out. I don't think I have ever tasted a Savoy with this much fruit intensity and richness here. Even so, the 2021 retains terrific freshness and verve. The purity of the dark red/blue fruit is just compelling. Naturally, the Savoy is a baby, but wow, is it promising.

A youthful, saturated ruby to purple color, the 2021 Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard is fresh and ripe with pure fruit of raspberry liqueur, fresh herbs, and layers of flowers. Medium to full-bodied, it retains fresh acidity, with ripe berries, tangy lift, and crunchy fruit with a snappy feel followed by more notes of orange peel, clove, and fresh earth. Give it another couple of years in the cellar and drink 2025-2035. Heidi and Ted Lemon operate Littorai from their Gold Ridge Estate in Sebastapol, where they produce Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from exceptional cool-climate vineyard sites on the Sonoma Coast and in Anderson Valley. Ted is hands down one of Sonoma's most important farmers and winemakers today, and I met with him at the winery this May. Though they farm biodynamically, they prefer to describe their practices in the vineyards as “Generative Farming,” a term intended to include the human relationship to the stewardship and shaping of the land as part of modern nature and integrated farming. In the winery, all the wines undergo spontaneous fermentations, with the reds going through two to three weeks of fermentation, and although Ted is not dogmatic in his approach, each of the wines is raised similarly.