Occidental-Kistler Vineyards 'Freestone-Occidental' Pinot Noir 2021 750ml

The 2021 Pinot Noir Freestone-Occidental is incredibly expressive and detailed! Its aromas open slowly from blueberry, rhubarb and cranberry to tones of bitter orange, amaro, mossy bark and lavender, continuing to reveal new accents with each return to the glass. Light-bodied, it floods the mouth with fragrant, detailed fruit supported by chalky tannins and focused, shimmery acidity that calls you in for another sip. It has a haunting finish loaded with spicy layers, and it's very difficult to put this delicious wine down. Drink it now for its transparency and perfume, or allow it to develop savory complexity in bottle over the next decade.

The magenta-hued 2021 Pinot Noir Occidental Station Vineyard is ripe with notes of black raspberries, fresh violets, dark spices, and sweet herbs. It reveals a good deal of structure and has rich extract while retaining plenty of fresh acidity. Offering a deeper mineral profile of graphite and dark stones as well as a hint of warming earth spice, it’s long and persistent and is going to show its best if cellared another several years. Drink 2026-2046.

The 2021 Pinot Noir Occidental Station is a total knockout. Wild, deep and exotic to the core, the 2021 is immediately captivating. Soaring aromatics meld into dark red/purplish fruit, orange peel, spice, menthol, cedar and blood orange. A wine of striking depth and mind-blowing beauty, the 2021 is, quite simply, magnificent. The Occidental Station is the one Pinot in this range that does not come from the Occidental property, but rather a site under long term lease. It is endowed with tremendous immediacy, therefore offering a bit more fruit exuberance and succulence than the Pinots from the Occidental Estate.

From bottle #OC1880, the Occidental Station is on a 30-year lease, and they've been working with it since it was planted in 1998. Fleshy raspberries make way for gravelly, dusty, and ripe strawberries with aged balsamic. Loads of sweet red and black raspberries, dried herbs and gravelly dust mark the palate. Fleshy, fruit-forward and ripe, but maintaining the elegance of the Occidental house style.

This is super sleek in feel, with beautiful hibiscus, damson plum and black cherry puree notes that race through, flanked with a mouthwatering rooibos tea note and backed by a long minerally echo on the finish. A very pure, precise wine. Drink now through 2033. 505 cases made.