2024 Merriam Vineyards Pinot Noir Russian River Valley 750 ml

Merriam Vineyards started, as a lot of good wine stories do, with a love affair. Peter Merriam was an East Coast wine retailer with a habit of heading west to hunt down boutique bottles for his customers, and somewhere along the way—helped along by a honeymoon spent tasting through France with his wife, Diana—the Russian River Valley got under his skin. In 2000, the couple bought their first vineyard and set about building something that would last.

A quarter century later, that something is a three-property family estate on the edge of Healdsburg, with the Merriams’ son Evan now at the helm. It has stayed comparatively under the radar—no small feat in a valley this famous—while steadily earning the kind of respect that comes only from what’s in the bottle.

Part of that is the farming. The estate’s Pinot vineyards are organic, tended by winemaker William Weese with a low-intervention hand—he carries the in-house title “Shepherd,” and has turned a flock of sheep loose in the vines to handle the mowing. A Sonoma County native, Weese cut his teeth at MacPhail and in cellars across New Zealand, France, and Chile, and it shows in a style that splits the difference between Old-World restraint and New-World generosity.

The Russian River Valley gives him a lot to work with. Pacific fog rolls in most evenings and can drop temperatures dramatically overnight, and that long, cool hang is what lends the region’s Pinot its signature combination of ripe fruit and bright, savory lift.

The 2024 vintage played to those strengths. Two wet winters had broken a long drought, and a warm but even summer built ripeness without pushing it—the Pinot came in plush, generous, and full of energy, a classic and welcoming expression of the appellation.

In the glass, expect a deep, dark ruby and a nose of black cherry, red rose, and kola nut, with damp forest floor and a dusting of nutmeg underneath. The palate is all Russian River—dense through the middle, silky in the tannin, and long on the finish. Pour it alongside a roast chicken or a mushroom risotto, or simply for its own sake.