Flowers Pinot Noir ’18, Sonoma Coast, CA

An elegant, old-world soul, classic.

Flowers is a winery dedicated to crafting elegantly balanced wines that express their vineyard’s authentic voice. They’re able to achieve this through organic farming and minimal intervention in the cellar. As a result, their wines faultlessly showcase fresh coastal minerality, hallmark purity of fruit, and complex nuances derived from their land. The 2018 release is, as Jeb Dunnuck writes, “impeccably made and high-quality.”

Joan and Walt Flowers helped shape Pinot Noir production along the extreme Sonoma Coast and were among the first to plant grapes in the area known as the Fort Ross Seaview AVA. The region is also a source for such notables as Peter Michael, Marcassin, Martinelli, Fort Ross, and Pahlmeyer, to list a few.

With attention to every detail, Flowers hand-sorts their fruit on their custom-built shaker table before gently dispersing the berries onto the next sorting table where six sorters assess every cluster before allowing only the best fruit to pass through into the fermenters. At under fifty bucks, I highly recommend harvesting some for your cellar.