Tyler Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir 2020

“The 2020 Pinot Noir (Sta. Rita Hills) offers unreal quality and personality. Generous red/purplish fruit, blood orange, spice, rose petal and licorice are all dialed up. The appellation Pinot benefits from an extra kick of generosity from the warm, dry season. It is a wonderful effort at this level, or any level, to be perfectly honest. I loved it. Drinking window: 2021-2030. 91 points

This is a fabulous set of new releases from Justin Willett at Tyler. The first wines from Willett’s new Mae Estate are among the clear highlights. Quite frankly, I was blown away, especially considering that the vines are just a few years old. As always, the Tyler wines show a light hand and plenty of site expression. Whole clusters are in the 33-50% range, except in younger vineyards, where Willett prefers to de-stem. In addition to the 2019s, I also tasted two 2020s that have just been bottled. The 2020 Sta. Rita Hills Pinot will give readers a very good idea of what to expect from the vintage. I can’t recommend these wines highly enough.”

Antonio Galloni, Vinous (10/21)