Do we ship to you?.
More Details
Winery
Row Eleven
Varietal: Pinot Noir
Pinot Noir is one of the planet's most widely grown and enjoyed grape varietals, and thanks to the popularity of the key wines it is associated with – Burgundy and Champagne – it has successfully spread from its native home in France to much of the wine producing world. Pinot Noir means 'black pine' in French, and this refers to the extremely dark, inky color of the fruit, and the fact that it grows in conical bunches, resembling a large pine cone. It has long been revered for its wide range of refreshing, summery flavors, and the fact that it produces red wines of a beautiful garnet color and light body. More recently, sparkling wines made exclusively with Pinot Noir have been extremely popular, and the orchard notes found in the fizzy 'blanc des noirs' wines mark out just how versatile this grape varietal really is. Despite being notoriously difficult to grow, it isn't hard to see why this grape is now found in vineyards all over the world, as it is synonymous with romance and decadence, quality and fantastic flavor
Region: California
California as a wine producing region has grown in size and importance considerably over the past couple of centuries, and today is the proud producer of more than ninety percent of the United States' wines. Indeed, if California was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world, with a vast range of vineyards covering almost half a million acres. The secret to California's success as a wine region has a lot to do with the high quality of its soils, and the fact that it has an extensive Pacific coastline which perfectly tempers the blazing sunshine it experiences all year round. The winds coming off the ocean cool the vines, and the natural valleys and mountainsides which make up most of the state's wine regions make for ideal areas in which to cultivate a variety of high quality grapes.
Country: United States
For three hundred years now, the United States has been leading the New World in wine production, both in regards to quantity and quality. Wine is actually produced in all fifty states across the country, with California leading the way by an enormous margin. Indeed, as much as eighty-nine percent of all wines to come out of the United States are produced in California, where the fertile soils and sloping mountain sides, coupled with the long, hot summers provide ideal conditions for producing high quality, European style red, white and rosé wines. With over a million acres of the country under vine, the United States sits comfortably as the fourth largest wine producer in the world, where imported grape varietals from all over the Old World are processed using a successful blend of traditional and contemporary techniques.
Appellation: Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara is often overlooked as a wine region, however, the quality of the producing coming out of this coastal county cannot be ignored – many of the best New World red wines hail from Santa Barbara, and the wineries of the region are consistently impressing with their flair for experimentation. For over a hundred years, Santa Barbara has been using the blazing Californian sunshine and cooling Pacific Ocean breezes to produce classic French grape varietals of stunning quality and distinction, leading many people to refer to the county as the 'Californian Provence'. Indeed, the terroir of Santa Barbara is not so dissimilar to that of many great French wine regions, and this may go some way to explain why the red and white wines which are produced there pack in so many interesting and enticing features.