Vivier Gap's Crown Pinot Noir 2021 (750ml) *

Gap's Crown is a vineyard site on the Sonoma Coast that turns up on labels serious about cool-climate Pinot Noir, and this bottling from Vivier is a 2021 single-vineyard expression of that fruit. The Sonoma Coast tends to give Pinot with bright acidity and a taut, cool-weather profile, and that framing shows here in a wine built around freshness rather than weight.

The aromatics take their time, unfolding into pomegranate, blueberry and wild cherry edged with conifer, Earl Grey tea and a graphite note. On the medium-bodied palate the fruit arrives perfumed and layered, lifted by a chalky structure and real concentration, and it closes with soft, spicy accents. Poised and expressive, with the kind of energy that keeps each sip moving.