Each block of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinotage that make up our 53-acre vineyard was thoughtfully planted with the soil, microclimate, and clone in mind. Explore each varietal, three vintages and the totality of our terroir with The Range Vertical.

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.

2017 TOP OF LAND PINOT NOIR

93 Points –  Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Estate Top of Land takes its time to unfurl to cranberries and blackberries with nuances of black tea, woodsmoke, dusty earth and amaro. The medium-bodied palate is spicy and nuanced with a grainy frame and long, uplifted finish. 

93 Points –  James Suckling
Dried leaves, sweet tobacco, spices and dried red and dark cherries abound here. This has impressive layering of fine tannin and ripe, fresh red cherries that build nicely into the long, plush and silky finish. Drink or hold. September, 2019.

93 Points - Jeb Dunnuck
Aged 10 months in 45% new French oak and all from the estate Fort Ross Vineyard, the 2017 Pinot Noir Top Of Land gives up an elegant, layered, medium-bodied style that offers more dark berry fruits, mulberries, toasted spice, and dried earth nuances. It's complex and has a seamless texture, polished tannins, and a good finish. This is another charming, balanced, classic wine from this address.

★★★★+ EXCELLENT - Restaurant Wine, Ronn Wiegand MS/MW
The Top of Land is complex and vibrant, an excellent Pinot Noir in a medium-full style that is balanced, crisp, long on the palate, and persistent on the finish, tasting of cherry, rose petal, pomegranate, and toasty oak. Very fine quality; can be aged.

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. August 2021.

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.

17 Off-The-Beaten-Path California Reds - Food & Wine Magazine
Lester and Linda Schwartz planted a vineyard in the early 1990s on a ridge about a mile from the ocean in Fort Ross, north of Jenner, California—the extreme Sonoma Coast. Eventually, they helped define and create the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA. Known for their vivid, electric, ocean-spray-kissed Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays, they also planted some Pinotage—a grape typical to South Africa—as an homage to their days at the University of Cape Town. There are just over 50 acres of Pinotage planted in the entire state, and this particular one is made in minuscule quantities…less than 10 barrels. It's sumptuously earthy, boasting silky dark cherries, blackberries, and firm, grippy tannins, with lavish baking spices rounding it all out. 

★★★★ Restaurant Wine, Ronn Wiegand MS/MW
This 2016 is an aromatic, intensely flavored wine with exotic raspberry, plum jam, black tea, red licorice, guava, and spicy oak flavors, good balance, and a long finish. Drinks well now, but can age further.