Emme Wines "Pretty Like The Wind" Russian River Valley Pinot Noir 2025

This was Rosalind's first time making Pinot Noir for Emme, and it is a very special wine. A good friend of hers has a small family vineyard in the hills west and north of Sebastopol with three acres of Pinot Noir. Like many growers in California, they struggled to find someone to purchase and make wine from their fruit last year. Pinot is particularly tough for grape farmers to sell these days, because there is a large amount of it grown in the area and it generally commands a higher price per ton, partly due to how difficult it is to grow.

When it was clear that her friends wouldn’t find a buyer in 2025, she decided to buy it herself and make Pinot Noir. Some would be for them to keep, and some to label under Emme Wines. They picked the fruit at 23.5 brix and brought it to the winery, where she treated it as she does all her other reds – foot crush and ferment whole cluster. It stayed on skins for a short six days, and then was pressed to stainless steel to finish primary fermentation. It was moved to neutral oak barriques for malolactic and six months of aging, before finally being racked to tank in late March for bottling. Indigenous yeast fermentation. SO2: 30 ppm total. No other additions, unfined and unfiltered. 100 cases produced.

The Pinot vineyard, Chokmalichi Farm, is on lovely rolling hills in West Sonoma County. "Pretty Like The Wind" s a song lyric that reminds Rosalind of the farm.

Based in Sonoma, California, Rosalind Reynolds founded Emme Wines (named after her grandmother) in 2018 after years in the industry alongside the likes of Les Capriades, Martha Stoumen, and Pax (where she is also the assistant winemaker). Rosalind focuses on "old school" California varietals, like Carignan, Colombard, Merlot and Zinfandel, as well as uncommon grapes like Abouriou, Valdiguie and Muscat Vert, all farmed organically and sustainably, and she makes wine without additives and minimal intervention.