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RAEN Winery, Pinot Noir, Royal St. Robert Cuvèe

California, United States 2016 (750mL)
$60.00
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RAEN Winery, Pinot Noir, Royal St. Robert Cuvèe

We’ve followed the impressive progress of RAEN since its inaugural vintage a few years ago, not just because Carlo and Dante Mondavi are friends but because of their deep love of Pinot Noir. Their project is an ambitious paradigm shift for a family traditionally associated with Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon, although the Mondavis, as Carlo is quick to point out, have produced Pinot Noir since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
Carlo and Dante’s father, Tim, is a lifelong Pinot Noir devotee whose wines from the ’70s and ’80s still show beautifully, and RAEN is the next step in the family’s evolution. Today’s cuvée is a wine named for the late, legendary Robert Mondavi (Carlo and Dante’s grandfather) but is not, as we noted in our offer of the ’15 last year, merely a “brand”—it’s a serious, classically made wine that aims to compete with the world’s best. The brothers found three West Sonoma Coast vineyards, all of them in striking distance of the Pacific, and have committed to letting those vineyards speak for themselves. The wines come with “natural” street cred as well: they’re crafted using only native yeasts; whole-cluster fermentation; and used oak barrels, evoking comparisons to top wines from Burgundy. In relatively short order, they’ve become an important name to know in Sonoma Coast Pinot, delivering a pitch-perfect snapshot of California’s premier terroir for the grape. We have enough to offer six bottles per person today and I’d urge you to take your limit—quantities are extremely low and it’s not likely to be seen again!
One thing about Robert Mondavi that is sometimes overlooked is that he truly believed in California as a terroir. Thanks to him and his contemporaries, California proved it could do Cabernet Sauvignon as well (or better) than anyone. In that same spirit, RAEN (which stands for ‘Research in Agriculture and Enology Naturally’ and pays tribute nature’s progression of rain becoming wine) was conceived as a validation of the Sonoma Coast as one of the world’s most important terroirs for Pinot Noir—the same reverence for “place” that fueled projects such as Opus One. Carlo and Dante’s passion for Pinot Noir was first fueled by their father at the family dinner table, and their thirst deepened when their grandfather brought them on adventures through the Pinot Noir Holy Grail that is Burgundy, where they visited many of the region’s greatest estates.
 
True to their source material—which, for “Royal St. Robert,” hails from an especially cool, fog-influenced vineyard in the town of Freestone -Occidental, overlooking Bodega Bay—the brothers take a resolutely traditional approach to production. Grapes are harvested at night to ensure freshness, and fermentations are inoculated using only the ambient yeasts that arrive in the winery with the grapes. About 75% of the fermenting must contains whole grape clusters, which, among other things, may help moderate the wine’s alcohol content (this one comes in at a modest 13%, like the ’15). The wine is aged for 10 months in 60-gallon, neutral French oak casks, after which it is bottled without fining or filtration, revealing a pure expression of terroir with the most nuanced and elegant characteristics of Pinot Noir.
 
The 2016 edition of Royal St. Robert exhibits a concentrated ruby red core with a light garnet rim. The perfumed nose reveals wild strawberry, pomegranate and rhubarb over an array of wet rose petals, white tea, grape stems, thyme, damp forest floor, crushed rocks, and warm baking spices. It is medium-plus in body with firm, fine-grained tannins similar to a youthful Morey-Saint-Denis. It is delicious and impossible to resist now—either decant it about 30 minutes or pull the cork two hours before serving between 60-65 degrees in Burgundy stems—but will also age 5-10 years with ease if kept well. It has the finesse to bridge the meat/fish/fowl divide (and would be a great Thanksgiving wine if you save a few bottles until then), and had me thinking about another California icon, Chef Thomas Keller: check out the attached recipe from his Bouchon Bistro. California does it all!
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Country
United States
Region
California
Sub-Region
United StatesSonoma Coast
Soil
Sandy Loam
Farming
Sustainable
Blend
Pinot Noir
Alcohol
13.0
OAK
Neutral French
TEMP.
60-65
Glassware
Burgundy Stems
Drinking
Now-2025
Decanting
30 Minutes
Pairing
Bouchon's Roast Turkey

United States

Washington

Columbia Valley

Like many Washington wines, the “Columbia Valley” indication only tells part of the story: Columbia Valley covers a huge swath of Central
Washington, within which are a wide array of smaller AVAs (appellations).

Oregon

Willamette Valley

Oregon’s Willamette Valley has become an elite winegrowing zone in record time. Pioneering vintner David Lett, of The Eyrie Vineyard, planted the first Pinot Noir in the region in 1965, soon to be followed by a cadre of forward-thinking growers who (correctly) saw their wines as America’s answer to French
Burgundies. Today, the Willamette
Valley is indeed compared favorably to Burgundy, Pinot Noir’s spiritual home. And while Pinot Noir accounts for 64% of Oregon’s vineyard plantings, there are cool-climate whites that must not be missed.

California

Santa Barbara

Among the unique features of Santa Barbara County appellations like Ballard Canyon (a sub-zone of the Santa Ynez Valley AVA), is that it has a cool, Pacific-influenced climate juxtaposed with the intense luminosity of a southerly
latitude (the 34th parallel). Ballard Canyon has a more north-south orientation compared to most Santa Barbara AVAs, with soils of sandy
clay/loam and limestone.

California

Paso Robles

Situated at an elevation of 1,600 feet, it is rooted in soils of sandy loam and falls within the Highlands District of the Paso Robles AVA.

New York

North Fork

Wine growers and producers on Long Island’s North Fork have traditionally compared their terroir to that of Bordeaux and have focused on French varieties such as Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

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