The Best Tasting Pinot Noir Wine We Have Ever Put in a Bottle Starts With One Vineyard

There are years you forget and years you do not. 2016 is one we talk about constantly.

Walk into our cellar and mention that vintage! Someone will pull out a glass before you finish the sentence. Not because we are sentimental about it, but because what came out of Bennett Valley that year genuinely stopped us in our tracks. The fruit was concentrated without being heavy. The acidity was alive. We already knew this was not going to be a wine we would rush to market when the first barrels settled after fermentation.

Nine years on, Our 2016 Bennett Valley Single Vineyard Pinot Noir is still one of the most requested bottles we make. Let’s get into why.

Bennett Valley Did Something Different That Year

Sonoma County had a benevolent growing season in 2016. Not dramatic. Not extreme. Just balanced and kind to the vines in the way that great vintages generally are. Cool nights kept the acidity intact while warm afternoons pushed the ripening forward at exactly the right pace.

Our vineyard on the South slopes of Bennett Mountain sits at an elevation where Pacific coastal fog regularly rolls through and cools the temperature back after sundown. That diurnal swing is not just a talking point for us.

It is the reason our pinot noir develops the kind of layered flavor that flat, warm-climate vineyards simply cannot replicate. The cold nights lock in freshness. The warm days build depth. The two things together create tension in the fruit that ends up as complexity in your glass.

Wine Enthusiast’s California vintage coverage has consistently highlighted 2016 as a standout year for Sonoma reds, particularly for wines that prioritize balance over brute force. That describes this wine exactly.

Twelve Months. French Oak. No Shortcuts.

After harvest, we put this wine into French oak barrels and left it there for over twelve months. That decision was not complicated. The fruit had the structure to handle the time, and the wine needed that period to pull itself together properly.

French oak is quieter than American oak. It does not stamp itself onto the wine or push vanilla and wood flavor into the foreground. What it does is give the wine a framework. Structure without noise. The tannins in this bottle are velvety precisely because they had enough time in the barrel to soften and integrate before we touched them again.

400 cases were produced in total. For a wine farmed and aged this way, that number reflects exactly how much fruit our vineyard gave us that year and nothing more.

Open the Bottle and Pay Attention

The color is the first thing to notice. Deep ruby at the center with real clarity, the kind you get from careful handling rather than aggressive processing.

Bring the glass up, and black cherries hit you first. Not the sweet, candied version you find in cheaper reds, but the real thing, dark and slightly tart with plums sitting just underneath. Baking spices come through behind that, warm and subtle, cinnamon and a trace of clove that weave through the fruit rather than sitting on top of it.

On the palate, the wine follows through on everything the nose promises. Black cherry and plum come first, then a hint of raspberry appears mid-palate and lifts the whole profile. That lift is what keeps this wine from feeling heavy. The tannins are smooth, the acidity is rounded, and the finish takes its time leaving.

We made this wine to be very adaptable. We mean that genuinely rather than as a catch-all description. It is medium-bodied enough to sit along salmon or roasted chicken but has enough structure to handle duck and anything with mushrooms or earthy flavors. Wine Folly’s pinot noir pairing guide puts it well when it notes that pinot noir’s natural acidity makes it one of the few red wines that genuinely works across a wide range of food. This bottle is a good example of exactly that.

If you are opening it tonight, pull the cork twenty minutes early. Give it room to breathe. Serve it around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Everything will open up and show you more than it would straight from a cold shelf.

One Place. One Year. Nothing Hidden.

Every grape in this bottle came from our vineyard. Not a blend of sites, not fruit sourced from a neighbor to top up production numbers. One place, farmed by our own team, harvested in one season.

We feel strongly about that because it means you are tasting something real and specific when you drink this wine. The soil at Bennett Valley, the way the air moves through there in September, the decisions our team made during the season about when to pick and how much to leave on the vine. All of it ends up in the glass.

There is no way to make a wine like this without caring about the vineyard first. Our team farms for quality rather than volume, which means lower yields, more attention per vine, and fruit that arrives at harvest already doing most of the work for us.

Where This Wine Is Right Now

A well-made pinot noir changes in the bottle over time, and the 2016 is in a genuinely good place right now. The fruit has softened slightly from where it was at release. The individual components that you could taste separately when the wine was younger have knitted together into something more unified.

What you get at this stage is a wine with real history behind it and real drinking pleasure in front of it. Not too young to be tight and closed, not so old that the fruit has faded. The window is open, and it is worth walking through.

At $55 for a single vineyard, French oak-aged pinot noir from a vintage this strong, this bottle represents exactly what we set out to make when we planted in Bennett Valley.

Pick up the 2016 Bennett Valley Single Vineyard Pinot Noir from our shop before the remaining stock is gone.