2016 Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines
Estimated value
Buying options
Tasting notes
Considered the flagship vineyard of the estate, the 2016 Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines comes from vines planted in 1978 and was brought up in 50% new French oak. It is a vibrant, focused, exotic effort that reveals incredible notes of raspberries, plums, cedary spice, blood orange, and earth. Medium-bodied, beautifully balanced, with a sappy, energetic texture and fine tannin, it needs 2-3 years of bottle age and will keep for two decades or more. Rivers Marie is the joint project between the husband wife team of Thomas Rivers Brown (of Schrader) and Genevieve Marie Welsh. The label was created in 2002 and includes wines from both Napa and Sonoma. Their Sonoma focus (which is the focus on this report) is on cool climate sites, and the Summa Vineyard, which was purchased by Brown and Welsh in 2010 located far out in the Occidental Ridge region of the Sonoma Coast, can be thought of as the heart of the estate. I tasted four Chardonnays for this report and six different Pinot Noir, all having singular and distinctive characters, which isn’t a given. These are elegant, Burgundian-styled wines that will benefit from short term cellaring, and I suspect be very long lived.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jeb Dunnuck
Antonio Galloni, Vinous
More reviews and scores
The clear highlight in this range, the 2016 Pinot Noir Summa Old Vines is lifted, gracious and super-aromatic in feel. Crushed flowers, sweet red berries, orange peel, sage and mint all flesh out in the glass. Even though it was made from fully destemmed fruit, the 2016 is quite floral and savory in style, with layers of racy fruit that build with time in the glass. The Old Vines is also the most elegant of the Rivers-Marie Pinots. Don't miss it.