2006 River Road Pinot Noir "Stephanie's Vineyard"
The discussion of Cali Pinot in another thread convinced me to give this one a try. I bought it a the local wine mart based on the luke warm recommendation of the owner for a "decent, reasonably priced" Pinot from California. His first response was that there is no such animal. I plunked down my $25 and took the risk.
On opening, the nose was muted, so I gave it about 15 minutes in the glass. Still not much on the nose save some cherry and bit of hot, damp grass. The taste was cherry and dilute cola with a hint of vanilla towards the end. The wine was flimsy and soft with no real complexity, or note worthy texture. Not necessarily a bad wine, simply not worth the $25 asking price like most of the Cali Pinots I have tasted in the last couple of years. At $12 dollars I would possibly consider buying another bottle as a nice sipper. Any amount over $15 for this wine is too much in my opinion. Again, it's been a long time since I've had a Cali Pinot that I thought was a good QPR. I'm not big on point scoring, but I would have to give this wine about an 84.