Med light ruby headed out to wide garnet edges.  A certain European cold-cellar situation greets you.  Huge nutty warm fig-newton dried apricot, sweat and woodsy nose accentuated with round crenshaw fruit and an alcoholic note.  Something several days old popped up on social media today about this producer and I remembered I had a bottle buried on the experiment rack.  Quite certain I purchased it at Winehound in Santa Barbara.  Wide and fairly fat in the nose, showing everything you would expect from a well-extracted entry-level *Sonoma Coast* Pinot from a respected producer with many far nicer–but probably not as user-friendly–bottles in their line-up.  This thing reeks of fruit and oak–I’m not complaining here–and manages to blend in enough varietal selling-points and ambiguities to keep the Pinotphile intrigued.  In the mouth, wide and spicy, tarry and acidic, with young, bright tannins representing right up front.  Lovely cold-weather–but meticulously macerated–fruit dominates in  textbook thin-colour/massive-mouthfeel pure Pinot velvet and elegance.  A slight AL heat caps the brilliant cedar and poivre-blanc finish.

2013 FAILLA Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 13.9

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