2012 Joseph Phelps Pinot Noir Freestone Vineyards Sonoma Coast 750 ml

Joseph Phelps on Sonoma Coast: Top Pinot Noir of 2012

When your name is Phelps, and you've spent decades building the reputation of one of Napa Valley's most iconic reds, you think long and hard before taking on new ventures. So it must have been with plenty of trepidation that Joseph Phelps began tossing around the idea of growing Pinot Noir that could meet the expectations of Phelps' Insignia.

In the mid-1990s, Insignia was already on fire — standing shoulder to shoulder with Opus One and Silver Oak — earning regular 97-point accolades from Robert Parker. As Phelps climbed out of Oakville, taking that serpentine drive over the pass en route to the edgiest perches of Sonoma Coast, he clearly understood the challenge at hand.

Freestone Vineyard, Sonoma Coast

It would be half a decade after that first drive over the Oakville Grade that a real estate agent led the Phelps team to a sprawling dairy farm rich with Goldridge soils outside the town of Freestone. After the family's viticultural experts dug experimental holes on nearly every exposure and hillside of the farm, Joe Phelps finally rolled the dice on a Pinot Noir estate.

One of the most extreme perches on the Sonoma Coast, Freestone's steep slopes are an ancient seabed, comprised of sandy loam that offers both ample drainage and an easy path for roots to spider meters deep into the substrata. Summer highs rarely touch 90 degrees. When night falls, the mercury tumbles into the 50s.

In 2012, more than a decade after Phelps' Sonoma Coast land grab, Freestone was treated to one of the more extraordinary seasons in the grape-growing history of the Petaluma Wind Gap. Hillside vines that rarely carry more than 2 tons per acre yielded nearly 3 — even after severe crop thinning.

While thick fog shrouded the vineyard in the early morning and late afternoon, barely a drop of rain fell from June to the end of August, pushing the envelope on ripeness and physiological maturity like rarely before — without sacrificing a gram of high-toned acidity.

The 2012 Phelps Freestone Vineyard Pinot Noir is a knockout. Brilliant dark-ruby, infused with piercing aromas of black cherry, raspberry, and tobacco, lightly touched with new-wood vanilla. Ultra-concentrated on the attack, but absent an inkling of overripeness, the core is packed with crushed red fruit and dark cherry preserves, violets, and licorice, finishing with great persistence and length. Drink now-2022.

93 points from Antonio Galloni — one of the top Pinot Noirs of 2012. $55 on release. $37 on WineAccess. 480 bottles are up for grabs.