2016 Raen Winery Royal St. Robert Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir 750 ml

Pinot Noir From America’s Wine Royalty

This Royal St. Robert cuvée is sold out on Raen’s website. We managed to wrestle a small allocation away from Eleven Madison Park and its three Michelin-star company. In the words of Galloni: “Don’t miss them.”

We sat down with winemaker Carlo Mondavi [watch here]

The label might be new, but Raen is run by American wine royalty: Dante and Carlo Mondavi, grandsons of Napa legend Robert Mondavi and sons of Continuum’s Tim Mondavi. With a passion for Pinots of ethereal, Burgundian finesse, they’ve focused on vineyards in the wild extremes of Sonoma, each bottle stamped with windblown coastal influence. The results have been nothing short of astonishing, with Vinous’s Antonio Galloni declaring, “Raen Pinots convey the essence of site with tremendous depth and intensity.” Vibrant and precise, this 2016 Royal St. Robert release won dual 94 point scores from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate and James Suckling, who praised “the effortless flow of smoothly ripe, spicy red cherries that roll out smoothly into the long, succulent finish.”

Few last names in the history of American wine are quite as evocative as Mondavi. Robert Mondavi helped make Napa Valley the colossus it is today, teaming up with Château Mouton Rothschild to develop one of the world’s most famous wineries, Opus One. His son Tim followed in the family business, turning out high-scoring reds reminiscent of Right Bank Bordeaux from his acclaimed Continuum estate on Pritchard Hill. Now the next generation (the fourth, to be exact) are writing a new chapter, as brothers Carlo and Dante Mondavi plant their flag on the far reaches of the Sonoma Coast.

The grape of choice for these young Mondavis is Pinot Noir—with an emphasis on minerality, delicacy, site transparency, and whole-cluster fermentation.

From the start, the wines were met with critical applause. In one of his early reviews of the wines, Antonio Galloni raved: “These three Pinots from Raen, Carlo and Dante Mondavi's Sonoma Coast project, are superb. Frankly, I had a hard time moving on from these wines as they were so deeply impressive from the moment I first tasted them."      

In 2016, Carlo and Dante would reach a new critical height with their Royal St. Robert cuvée, named after their grandfather, grabbing top scores from both James Suckling and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. The fruit for the wine hails from a Sonoma Coast site near the village of Freestone, overlooking Bodega Bay. Deeply influenced by the maritime climate, fog rolls over the grapes in the early morning, preserving the berries’ crystalline acidity; by late morning, sun breaks through the mists and continues to warm the fruit throughout the day, leading to full concentration tempered by cold ocean breezes.

The result is a Pinot Noir that has already sold out many places, as three-star restaurants on both coasts can’t get enough of this producer. Our share won’t last long either.