2022 Cobb Vineyards Pinot Noir Wendling Vineyard Anderson Valley 750 ml

Ross Cobb’s 2022 Wendling Vineyard Pinot Noir is one of the finest California Pinot Noirs we’ve had in years—and Vinous and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate are similarly smitten, awarding it 96 and 95 points respectively. Vinous’s Antonio Galloni called it “classy” and “translucent,” a wine where “everything speaks to balance.”

To get a sense of Ross Cobb’s status on the Sonoma Coast, just look at the wineries that have recruited him: Burt Williams and Bob Cabral of Williams-Selyem nabbed him in 1998. Flowers hired him away in 2000. Then David Hirsch called, asking to do the same, in 2009.

Ross launched Cobb Wines in 2001, and part of his business plan—like luminaries Littorai and Peay—was to focus primarily on restaurants. It’s paid off. Cobb wines are in the greatest restaurants in Northern California. Case in point: His wines currently have SIX slots on the list at the MICHELIN three-star SingleThread. But finding them at retail is rare.

Wendling debuted in the Cobb lineup in 2017 and quickly became one of the winery’s signature bottlings. Located at the northwesternmost tip of Anderson Valley in what’s known as the “deep end,” Wendling Vineyard is just a few miles from the Pacific, and the brilliance of the site has attracted the attention of some of the heaviest hitters in the Pinot Noir world.

In the mornings, ghostly fog blankets the vines at Wendling, keeping the Pinot Noir berries cool and maintaining their mouthwatering acidity. By midday, gusts from the ocean blow off the fog, allowing the California sun to do its work ripening the fruit. Drastic diurnal temperature shifts yield wines of remarkable balance and complexity.

In 2022—a vintage Ross has spoken of with real enthusiasm, one that delivered concentration and power where 2021 delivered serenity—the result is a wine Galloni describes as “razy and extroverted,” with blood orange, cinnamon, star anise, and rose petal all in brilliant harmony. Ross used half whole-clusters in the fermentation, threading that characteristic black-tea savoriness through the wine’s mélange of exotic red fruit, spice, and mineral precision.