Three Sticks Price Family Estates Pinot Noir 2021

Restrained with notes of bright red cherry accenting lush blue fruit. Excellent acid and tannin structure suggest good aging potential.

This wine is crafted from our Estate vineyards and represents the winemaker's craft at its best. Ryan Prichard selects specific blocks of grapes that represent his vision for the best of what Sonoma County can produce. The 2019 vintage was in the Spectator's Top 100 list. This wine is - by far - our most sought after bottling.

Being a Sonoma Coast appellation blended wine, this product has multiple vineyards in the composition. To generalize, coastal fog and maritime winds from the pacific ocean provide a cooler climate in the Sonoma Coast. Abundant rain and fertile loamy soils provide optimal conditions for grape vines to thrive and produce high quality fruit.

Clusters were picked at night to ensure the fruit was cold in order to prevent spontaneous fermentation. The clusters were first sorted to remove under ripe clusters, raisins, fungus and any material other than grapes. 75% of the clusters were destemmed and 25% of the fruit was added to the fermenter as whole cluster. The destemmed berries were then sorted to remove any pink and water berries. Dry ice and 30ppm of sulfur dioxide was added to the must to keep the fermenter cold and prevent spoilage organisms from growing. After a 4 day cold soak, the cap was punched down 4 times a day to promote extraction of color, tannin and flavor while also managing the temperature of the fermentation.

Five different coopers are used to select the barrel prescription for the wine. 100% of the barrels are french burgundy, 43% of which is new. The wine was aged on light lees for 11 months before being racked and bottled.