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Pinot Noir: The Russian River Valley vs Sonoma Coast

Winemaker Fred Scherrer of the Scherrer Winery discusses the terroir of the Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast Appelations in California, and talks about how the two can taste different. This question came from Steven Rigisich of Pinot Days.

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Fred Scherrer makes wine at the Scherrer Winery: www.scherrerwinery.com

Well Sonoma Coast appellation is so large I mean if the Russian River Valley is stretching it the Sonoma Coast is broken it quite unfortunately as an official appellation however the way that I use the definition if it’s would be very close proximity to the ocean and what I tell people is that if you could ride a bicycle to go fishing in the ocean without breaking too big of a sweat chances are you’re starting from Sonoma Coast appellation vineyard in other words that means you’re probably up on the hill it’s coasting most of the way to the ocean rather than pedaling up over the hills to get to the ocean that said to usually due to the elevation in order to get the stuff light you have less low nighttime temperatures than you would see in the Russian River Valley and I suspect that there’s I’ll back up a little bit there’s I think similarity between the sassafras notes that I tend to see in Sonoma Coast wines more often than not relative to the the cola type notes that I see in the Russian River Valley wines I think they’re they’re coming probably from a similar place there’s there some overlap there but the difference is you have to do more with perhaps nighttime temperatures so that the cooler during the growing season and ripening part of this season the cooler the nighttime temperatures the more you’ll get those things to to express themselves as big cola notes as opposed to the sass arrest notes with slightly higher nighttime temperatures and that excludes anything about daytime temperatures is there a big difference between soil in the Sonoma Coast and Russian River Valley there’s huge differences everyplace there tend to be less marked differences in the Russian River Valley because it tends to have more alluvial soils which would be a little more homogeneous as opposed to right on the coast where we’ve got the San Andreas Fault stumbling all these different soil types together so I think there’s more radical differences of the closer to the fault at least which would tend to be more toward the income the cinema coasts Appalachian wine so we sender my effective definition of so that’s a really good question because the appellation is rather large and I think it has different characteristics depending on which corners in which soil is your on but in general if I had to just say one thing I would say you know look for black cherry cola notes and mouthfeel.

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