The 2018 Flanagan Pinot Noir Platt Vineyard offers an expressive nose of orange blossom and Christmas spice. On the palate the wine has very supple tannins, great acidity, and beautiful black raspberry, blueberry, and cassis fruits.
The key to producing top-flight Pinot Noir is the terroir. The Platt Vineyard is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sites in California for Burgundy varieties. It is challenging and very expensive to farm this extreme coastal location, but the reward is that we get to make a wine from one of the greatest Pinot Noir vineyards in the New World.
Vineyard Notes
The 2018 vintage was a typical Sonoma County growing season…except for the unusually large crop. The Pinot Noir crop was about 30% larger than 2017. Our Platt Ranch in Bodega also had a larger than typical crop in 2018. Platt is all the way at the coast and often struggles to set fruit. The weather at the coast can be cold, wet, and windy…all things that inhibit pollination. The best vintages at Platt (unlike most vineyards) are the largest ones. The vineyard has very tight spacing (so very high vines per acre) and lots of vine vigor. The vines find their best balance when the fruit set allows the vine to produce a “normal” crop of 3 tons per acre on Pinot Noir and 4 tons per acre on Chardonnay. The temperature at the coast is very even all year long so Platt is able to hang fruit well into the fall if needed. 2018 was essentially perfect at Platt.