Best-of-the-best Pinot Noir blend a star in youth and a decade old.
Sometimes a single bottle tells you everything you need to know about a winery and its winemaker. The 2014 Akiko’s Cuvée Pinot Noir, sampled at a May 2024 dinner celebrating Sebastopol’s Freeman Winery, was like that for me. Remarkably fresh with plenty of fruit but revealing secondary flavors of earth, spice, and oak, it was a marvel of grace and finesse. Wines like this are not accidents.
Cool-Climate Wines
Based in the West Sonoma Coast AVA, Tokyo-born winemaker Akiko Freeman and her husband, Ken Freeman, produce cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. From previous tastings and the dinner’s offerings – the winery’s second sparkling vintage, two 2022 Chardonnays, and 2021 estate Pinots from the Gloria and Yu-Ki vineyards – I already had a favorable impression of Akiko Freeman’s skill as a winemaker and the couple’s commitment to excellence. But the 2014 wine, a blend of two-thirds fruit from Gloria and Yu-Ki, plus grapes from four well-known Sonoma Coast sites, moved me with its soul and artistry.
Cave Tasting
A cave tasting two months later at a thick wooden slab supported by wine barrels was pleasantly old-school. As the session began, Akiko, whose first love is Pinot Noir, recalled Ken’s suggestion that she also make Chardonnay. Raised on her wine-loving father’s restrained Burgundian whites — and being less than thrilled with the California butter bombs then in full vogue — her first reaction, she laughed, was “over my dead body.” Fortunately, she relented — her Chardonnays captivate with their freshness, complexity, and windswept vitality.
Easy on the Oak
Freeman aged the 2022 Hawk Hill Chardonnay primarily in neutral (previously used) French oak, adding roundness without upstaging the fruit. The 2021 Ryo-Fu (the name translates as “cool breeze”) received 12% new French oak, more than usual for her, she said, rendering it slightly more structured than Hawk Hill. Preceding the 2021 Gloria Estate and Yu-Ki Pinot Noirs from the dinner was the 2022 KR Ranch Pinot, notably soft and drinkable considering its age of less than two years. “KR” stands for Keefer Ranch, a heralded Green Valley site.
Translator
As a winemaker, Freeman defines her role as “a translator of the land and the year,” making Akiko’s Cuvée Pinot Noir, a blend of the best estate and sourced lots, the ideal way to discover how any given vintage unfolded. With the dinner’s still vibrant 2014 as a benchmark, it was easy to imagine the lusciously textured current-release 2021 from the cave tasting aging equally well.
Why go: superior winemaking; cave tastings; scenic property.
Info
1300 Montgomery Rd., Sebastopol 95472
More West Sonoma County Wineries
Black Kite Cellars
Emeritus Vineyards
Joseph Jewell Wines
Small Vines Wines
Trombetta Family Wines