The Essentials Trio
Our variety set showcases the full range of grapes we grow at Fort Ross Vineyard: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinotage.
2018 MOTHER OF PEARL CHARDONNAY
94 Points - Wine Enthusiast
Dark gold in color, with a buttery creaminess, this wine is richly delicious in pear, baked lemon and a mix of baking and Asian spice. Oyster-shell-like texture adds minerality and a taste of the vineyard, so close as it is to the ocean. - Virginie Boone, August 2021.
★★★★+ EXCELLENT - Restaurant Wine, Ronn Wiegand MS/MW
The 2018 Mother of Pearl is a full bodied, crisp, complex wine with rich fruitiness of pineapple, candied lemon, and honey with toast, vanilla, and oak characters. It has good balance and a lingering finish. Still quite young; warrants another year or so of bottle aging. White Burgundy-like in style. Excellent.
2018 THE TERRACES PINOT NOIR
94 Points - Wine Enthusiast
Stemmy and earthy in forest floor, this memorably balanced, elegant and coastal wine shows a wealth of tangy red fruit, a mix of plum and wild strawberry. Sultry and seamless on the palate, the tannins are silky and well-integrated, exhibiting a graceful, high-toned freshness. - Virginie Boone, August 2021.
2016 PINOTAGE
91 Points - Wine Enthusiast
A rare find anywhere in California, let alone the coast, this cross-breed of Cinsault and Pinot Noir shows earthy notes of tree bark and cedar. The elegant frame of soft, integrated tannin allows room for layers of black tea, berry pie and cardamom to take hold and find a seamless core of flavor. - Virginie Boone.
90 Points - Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pinotage Fort Ross Vineyard is medium ruby-purple in color with a broody nose of tar, earth and bay leaves with baked black berries and cherries and meaty hints. Medium to full-bodied, it's dark-fruited in the mouth with savory and earthy accents, framed by firm, chewy tannins and lifted by good freshness, finishing long and earthy.