Darling Grand Vent Vineyard Pinot Noir Petaluma Gap 2019

Darling Wines is a dazzling new brand from power-couple Tom and Ashley Darling. With an eye for quality, holistic values, and a collaborative mindset, these two have started this family brand with the clearest of intentions: to make site-specific wines with traditional techniques and minimal intervention to express the true nature of the terroir. Their mutual love for coastal Pinot Noir inspired the inception of the project, and it remains the backbone of their portfolio. When fruit from the Grand Vent vineyard became available, they leapt at the chance to work with it. This vineyard is nestled within Sonoma County’s newest AVA, the Petaluma Gap. While the Petaluma name gives it a sense of place, it’s the Gap that gives the new appellation real definition. A 15-mile-wide opening in the coastal mountain range brings cold air from the Pacific Ocean and pulls it east over land to the San Pablo Bay. Heavy morning fog during the growing season is as much a given as wind in the afternoon. Temperatures consistently swing 40–50 degrees over the course of a day, thanks to the return of fog each night. It’s a tough growing environment that rewards patience and nerve; yields are low and grapes ripen slowly. The wines from this AVA offer rich, textured intensity with cool-climate aromatics and undeniable acidity. The majority of the Grand Vente vineyard is planted to Pinot Noir with clones of Pommard 4, Dijon 113, and 667. In his book, A New California Wine, Jon Bonne describes the vineyard as “perhaps the most challenging of vineyards [in all of California].” And yet Tom and Ashley Darling take fruit from this seemingly tortured AVA and make it taste like pure finesse. 

To further highlight the unique characteristics of this AVA, Tom and Ashley chose to ferment 100% of the fruit in whole clusters, which means that the berries and stems are both included in the fermentation. Stems impart their own unique flavors, as well as more tannin to produce greater structure in the finished wine. The degree to which this works depends on how ripe the stems get. When grapes are picked early, the stems can still be green and rubbery, and those underripe stems bring more green, vegetal and herbal notes to the wine. If the grapes are picked in a more mature state, the stems will be brown and woody and will lend flavors that are more earthy and spicy, like black tea and forest floor. For the Darling’s, the resulting wine offers aromas of bright cherry, pomegranate, raspberry, rose petal and eucalyptus. The palate opens with ripe, red fruit and is met with a lively acidity so characteristic of this cooler climate. The tannins are firm and long, evidence of that whole cluster fermentation, when used properly, can have an outstanding effect on wine.