2018 Paul Lato - Pinot Noir Hyde Vineyard Magic Moments
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The 2018 Pinot Noir Magic Moments Hyde Vineyard is an incredible wine, powerful but featherweight. It has a pale to medium ruby-purple color with delicate scents of lavender, tea leaves, saline and crushed red berries, opening to deeper tones of fragrant earth and licorice with time in the glass. In the mouth, it's smooth as silk with bright, crunchy, spicy fruits, firm but fine and detailed and finishing with a classic peacock's tail of expanding flavors. Only 100 cases were made.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Antonio Galloni, Vinous
More reviews and scores
All destemmed and brought up in plenty of new oak (80%), the ruby/plum-hued 2018 Magic Moments Hyde Vineyard offers up a ripe, perfumed bouquet of Bing cherry, blood orange, violets, black tea, and forest floor. This silky, medium to full-bodied effort brings plenty of sweet fruit, yet it stays light, elegant, and flawlessly balanced. A great California success story, Polish immigrant Paul Lato started as a cellar hand in a Santa Maria co-op/custom crush and has worked his way up to being one of the leading producers of artisanal, world class wines in California today. Lato fashions a bevy of wines (I would normally say too many, yet given the quality he’s able to achieve, the more the merrier) including Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Syrah. These aren’t lightweight wines, yet they never lose their sense of balance and elegance. I always describe the wines as having a slightly Old World style, but with one foot planted firmly in California. As I hope the reviews show, his 2018s are incredible wines across the board.
The 2018 Pinot Noir Magic Moments Hyde Vineyard is light in color, body and structure. Moreover, I don’t see any of the signatures of this well-known, highly-regarded Carneros site. Instead, the 2018 comes across as washed out and lacking in stuffing.