Published by Jeremy.
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Arista is one of our favorite wineries in Sonoma, and makes some of the best Pinot Noir we've had in the USA.
Naturally, we became club members and regularly add bottles to our cellar to age.
Arista's Perli Vineyard Pinot Noir is one that we have the most of in our collection. Now that our first bottles, from the 2017 vintage, are now entering their drinking window, we thought we'd pull one out and see how they're stacking up!
Arista's Pinot Noir Sings With Age
This eight year old Arista Pinot Noir was pale ruby in color (although borderline garnet) and had medium aromas of dried red cherry, red plum, raspberry, drued cranberry, clove, leather, tobacco, smoke, dried leaves, cassis, violet, and balsamic.
On the palate, it was dry with medium acidity, medium(-) chalky tannin, high alcohol, and medium(+) flavor intensity, body, and finish. We had notes of red cherry, cranberry, dried raspberry, blueberry, chalk, wet stone, cedar, clove, tobacco, dried leaves, vanilla, and cassis to name a few.
What was interesting with this bottle was just how mellowed out the tannins were, and the fairly dominant chalk flavor worked with the tannin structure quite well. Although this one could age a bit longer, we would likely let it go just a few more years and see how it develops as the tannin and acidity had seemingly dropped a bit for its relatively high alcohol.
Pinot Noir Food Pairing – Mushroom Risotto with Truffle
We paired this aged Pinot with a mushroom risotto with truffle because everything mushroom and truffle goes with Pinot, right?
This one was quite a beautiful pairing as we had more dominant blueberry, tar, tobacco, and kirsch notes in the wine that really helped liven up the flavor profile. We also had green beans on the side which brought out more red fruit and herbal characteristics too, making for a nice duo all around.
Score: 4.5 / 5
We want several bottles of this one.
We absolutely love Arista, and they make up one of the largest chunks of our cellar (particularly Perli Vineyard) for good reason- their bottles are fantastic. We would love to have more to add to our collection here!
It should be no surprise that we're fans of Arista's Pinot Noirs, and their Perli Vineyard is one of our all-time favorites. It was a nice little preview of the aging potential this wine has trying this one at almost eight years old, and we look forward to letting more time pass for the rest in our cellar before we check in again!
Arista Winery is located at 7015 Westside Rd, in Healdsburg, California. We purchased this bottle directly from the winery and enjoyed it in 2025.
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