Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019 - 28

Top 100 Wineries

COASTLANDS VINEYARD
IN OCCIDENTAL

ROSS
COBB

CALIFORNIA | SONOMA COAST
Racy pinot noir from the master of the far coast.

FOUNDED :

2001

OWNER/
WINEMAKER/
VITICULTURIST:

Ross Cobb
ACRES OWNED:

8.5

CASES PRODUCED:

1,500
ESTATE GROWN:

50%
28

ROSS COBB HAS MORE FAR-COAST winegrowing expertise than
most anyone working in Sonoma County today. His resume
starts with planting vines at Coastlands, the property his parents bought in Occidental in 1988. It's a ridge looking down
to the fog over the Pacific, three miles away, the slopes buried in that fog most evenings when the wind is on shore. The
Cobbs were selling pinot noir to Burt Williams at Williams
Selyem when Ross went to work with him, and he later spent
15 years making wine at Flowers and Hirsch, two other farcoast pioneers. In the meantime, he released his first Cobb
wine in 2001. He now farms 23 acres neighboring a redwood
grove, including the nine he planted with his parents, 5.5
acres lower down the ridge that his father planted and that
Ross now farms for Williams Selyem's Coastlands bottling,
and nine at Doc's Ranch, just southeast of Coastlands, on the
leeward side of the ridge.
This summer, as August turned to September, the pinot
noir clusters at Coastlands were small bunches of tiny purple beads, especially the Martini selection planted on AXR
rootstock at the top of the hill at Coastlands. The bunches
weigh about half of a typical bunch in the Russian River Valley; between the shatter at flowering and the fog, the yields at
Coastlands have averaged 1.8 tons per acre over the past 30
years. Cobb continues his father's battle against compacting
the soil between the vine rows, refusing to till and sustaining
a cover crop; he has dry farmed the vines in 20 of the last 30
growing seasons. The extreme conditions at Coastlands make

WINE & SPIRITS

BUYING GUIDE 2020

Cobb's business plan a bit challenging, but allow him to
produce cool, Pacific-driven pinot noir with the grand
mark of the redwoods and bay laurel that forest either
side of Fitzpatrick Road. -J.G.
2016 Sonoma Coast Diane Cobb Coastlands Vineyard
Pinot Noir ($120, 94 points) Cobb convinced his parents to
keep the 0.75-acre experimental block of 18 clones and selections they had planted in 1989. By the time they gave him the
block to start Cobb Wines, they had augmented the mix with
another 0.75 acres of Jackson 16, the selection they liked the
best when they tasted through all the rows with Burt Williams
of Williams Selyem in 1996. The vines, growing on their own
roots, produce a layered evocation of the coast in shades of
pinot noir, shapeshifting over the course of days into a racy red
with strawberry, cranberry and rhubarb notes. From the crisp
details of the delicate fruit to the transformation of the tannins
with air, everything points to the coastal complexity this wine
will grow into with time.
2017 Sonoma Coast JoAnn's Block Doc's Ranch Chardonnay ($70, 92 points) Ross Cobb makes this wine from a oneacre parcel of chardonnay growing on a steep ridge just southeast of Coastlands. The cold site produces a shy chardonnay,
with crunchy fruit-skin flavors that bring to mind a nectarine as
it's just beginning to come into ripeness. The texture is supple,
the flavors clean, and with several days of air, the wine is brimming with simple, direct flavors of the grapes and the smokiness of the earth.
2016 Sonoma Coast Monticue Vineyard Pinot Noir ($75,
92 points) Part of Cobb's small stable of vineyard-designates
from the hills southwest of Sebastopol, Monticue is five miles
from the Pacific and 700 feet above it. Ross Cobb makes this
wine from two acres of Calera, Pommard and several Dijon
clones planted in 2010. It's a tight, floral pinot noir, its strawberry scents touched by notes of green peppercorns and
woodsy chanterelles.

vineyard photo by Bob Holmes

Cobb

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019

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