McIntyre Vineyards Winemaker Series Pinot Noir by Don Van Staaveran 2021

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of McIntyre Vineyards Winemaker Series Pinot Noir by Don Van Staaveran 2021.

McIntyre Vineyards Winemaker Series Pinot Noir by Don Van Staaveran 2021
14.4% alcohol, cork, Santa Lucia Highlands, California.

This was grown on a Pinot Noir vineyard that is now over 50 years old, which is remarkable in both New World terms (in general) and in Santa Lucia Highlands AVA terms in particular

It’s a powerful Pinot Noir offering woodsmoke, reductive notes, layers of macerated cherries, chicory and woodsy spice characters. The firm, spicy, smoky tannin has a genuine flex to it, and at all points this wine feels polished, not to mention impressive. I tasted this at dinner, which is an ideal/not ideal way to assess wine, particularly when there’s a number of wines on the table. My final words, in my notes, were “clarity of vision” which, in the cold light of day, don’t entirely make sense to me. The score I wrote was 92-93 points.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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