2021 Occidental Station Vineyard

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 estate of Steve Kistler and his family in the Bodega Headlands, Occidental is exclusively devoted to producing coastally influenced Pinot Noir, and they are members of the West Sonoma Coast Vintners Association. Kistler was initially drawn to the area after tasting a bottling of Summa Vineyard that expressed a vivid and more cool climate style. Although Occidental was officially founded in 2011, Steve has been planting vineyards and purchasing property in the area since the 1990s and has retained his original cellar team for the past 30 years. His daughter, Catherine Kistler, has been the assistant winemaker since 2017. Each of the wines tasted for this report are their vineyard-designated selections, which are held back an initial year prior to release. I was highly anticipating this tasting, as the quality of the 2021 Freestone-Occidental tasted last year far exceeded my expectations, and this year’s visit did not disappoint. I would be thrilled to have any of these wines in my cellar.

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.

The 2021 Pinot Noir Occidental Station Vineyard has incredibly pure, soaring scents of wild cherry, blackberry and blueberry, and as it opens in the glass, it reveals detailed nuances of aniseed, mushrooms, forest floor and juniper. The palate is just as layered, offering tremendously concentrated, floral flavors. It has a seamless frame of powdery tannins and shimmery acidity and a wonderfully long, layered finish. It will be very long lived in the cellar.