2023 Sierra Mar Vineyard Pinot Noir
Santa Lucia Highlands AVA
Tasting Notes
“Deep red hue. Notes of choke cherry, raspberry, pomegranate, plum, and rose petal make for a pleasing start to this Pinot Noir. Upon taste, these qualities concentrate and wrap carefully around the undulating tannin and expansive texture. With modest acidity and restraint, this Pinot Noir will continue to shine for many years to come. Enjoy now through 2033.”
~Bill Brosseau, Director of Winemaking
July 2025
“Expressive fruit on the nose, and the palate shows harmonious, low-key flavors of minerals, bruised strawberries and boysenberries. Bay laurel and violets in the long, sappy finish. Drink or hold, but better in a year or two.” James Suckling, 2025
Production Data
Growers: Franscioni Family
Winemaker: Bill Brosseau
Appellation: Santa Lucia Highlands AVA
Elevation/Exposure: 1000 feet; Southeast
Soil: Decomposed granite/gravelly loam
Vineyard Age: 16 years
Viticulture Practice: Sustainable (SIP Certified)
Vinification: Destemmed, fermented in Stainless steel
Cooperage & Ageing: 63% new
Production: 8 barrels
Composition: 100% Pinot Noir (Pisoni Clone)
Acidity: TBA
Alcohol: 14.2%
Harvest: October 12, 2023, hand harvested
Club Release: July 2025
Release Price: $82
Drink Now through 2033
Past Vintage Wine Scores
“The Sierra Mar Pinot Noir is a beauty! Rich fruit and savory elements play off against one another resulting in a beautifully balance, tension-filled wine. There’s excellent depth of flavor and a serious character to this wine. The Sierra Mar Vineyard has 15 year old vines planted in loamy, decomposed granite soils at 1000′ elevation. Matured 18 months in 47% new French oak. pH 3.45, 14.2% alc.”
Don Winkler, International Wine Review,
June 2024
“The 2022 Pinot Noir Sierra Mar Vineyard is surprisingly floral for this site at elevation, exploding in the mouth with a truckload of stone fruit—sweet cherry, dark plum and spiced nectarine. It’s ripe and ready, with juicy, tart citrus acidity and energy to burn. Tannins are almost imperceptible, again a surprise for Sierra Mar. There’s so much to like here.”
Billy Norris, Antonio Galloni – Vinous, August 2024
“The 2021 Pinot Noir Sierra Mar Vineyard is gorgeous. Ripe red cherry fruit, spice, blood orange and cedar lend notable aromatic brightness. Winemaker Bill Brosseau crafted a Pinot that offers tons of nuance while keeping the natural power of this site in check. There’s a bit of new oak sweetness here, but otherwise, the Sierra Mar is quite fine. Here, too, the finish is wonderfully persistent.”
Antonio Galloni
Vinous
November 2023
“The 2021 Pinot Noir Sierra Mar Vineyard is gorgeous. Ripe red cherry fruit, spice, blood orange and cedar lend notable aromatic brightness. Winemaker Bill Brosseau crafted a Pinot that offers tons of nuance while keeping the natural power of this site in check. There’s a bit of new oak sweetness here, but otherwise, the Sierra Mar is quite fine. Here, too, the finish is wonderfully persistent.”
Lisa Perrotti-Brown
The Wine Independent
February 2024
“Moderate garnet color in the glass. an immensely satisfying wine with aromas of cherry, rose petal, spice and clover. A delicious cherry core attacks and soaks the mid palate and lingers what seems like an eternity on the finish. The deep Bing cherry goodness is accented with flavors of strawberry, red raspberry and cardamom spice. Seamless in texture with impeccable harmony. Even more striking when tasted the following day from a previously opened bottle. The best Sierra Mar Pinot Noir among many that I have tasted through the years. Flat out great.”
Rusty Gaffney
The PinotFile
June 2021
“Bright ruby-red. Spice-tinged raspberry and cherry aromas are complicated by suggestions of cola, incense, vanilla and smoky minerals. Sweet and expansive on the palate, offering intense red berry preserve, kirsch and spicecake flavors and hints of rose and mocha that build with air. Concentrated but also nervy and precise in style, delivering superb finishing thrust, polished tannins and impressive red fruit-driven persistence. 65% new French oak.”
Josh Raynolds
Antonio Galloni’s Vinous
May 2022
“Deep, glistening garnet. Smoke- and spice-tinged black raspberry, mulberry and rose pastille scents pick up suggestions of mocha and cola with air. Appealingly sweet and seamless on the palate, offering fleshy red and blue fruit, cherry-vanilla and floral pastille flavors that show building spiciness and fine definition. Smoothly blends depth and liveliness and finishes with strong, spicy cut, a repeating vanilla nuance and silky, slow-building tannins that meld with the clinging fruit. 66% new French oak.”
Josh Raynolds
Antonio Galloni’s Vinous
October 2020
Sierra Mar Vineyard
The Sierra Mar Vineyard is owned by the Franscioni Family and is located at one of the highest elevations in the Santa Lucia Highlands at just over 1,000 ft. The land is a dramatic 44-acre site that has been in the Franscioni Family for four generations and was originally part of a 420-acre cattle ranch. The steep and remote vineyard is divided by terrain and alluvial plains into distinct blocks with individual terroir. Gary Franscioni says Sierra Mar’s naturally thin soils, gusting winds, lack of water and high-altitude inaccessibility make for extremely exceptional wines. Testarossa is proud to be able to make wines from all five of the Franscioni/Pisoni properties.