100% Merlot from Sonoma Mountain, Sonoma County, California.
SRP of $35 and available to Naked Wines Angels for as low as $16. Sample submitted for review.
From the bottle:
“Pickberry Vineyard is nestled on benchland on the slope of Sonoma Mountain. It has been a famous and sought after source for rich, complex Merlot for decades. Thanks to Angel funding, we were able to make this very special single vineyard Merlot and offer it to you. Thanks, Angels!
14.3% Alcohol”
Here’s an interesting one from Naked Wines — I think this might be the first time I’ve seen one of their offerings come from a big name vineyard. In this case, that is the Pickberry Vineyard on the slopes of the Sonoma Mountain. Probably best recognized from the Ravenswood Pickberry Red, a Merlot based blend that retails for around $50, a number of wineries produce wine using their fruit. Add winemakers Tom Shula and Jim Olsen to that list.
This wine also has an interesting story in amatuer winemaker Tom Shula, a physicist and real estate broker who basically went from making wines in his garage to producing this wine using Pickberry fruit for Naked Wines. As a Naked Wines Angel himself, he truly got a big return on his investment — the folks at Naked Wines were so impressed with the quality of his wines, which had won several amateur winemaking awards, that they decided to invest in him directly. (You can read more about the unique Naked Wines business model and Angels in this post.)
The 2013 Jim Olsen and Tom Shula Pickberry Merlot begins with tons of delicious blackberry and plum aromas along with excellent streaks of spice. There are also nice touches of vanilla and rose petals and perhaps even a bit of cinnamon. The wine tastes smooth and medium-bodied with lots of deep and juicy dark berry fruit plus great spice and pepper notes. This is just a really delicious wine to drink. It ends with a long, mouth-drying finish of juicy fruit. Succulent stuff for sure!
If you want to give it a try yourself, we’ve got a special $100 voucher just for readers of The Reverse Wine Snob:
Check out all of our NakedWines.com recommendations here.
