In Sonoma’s Cool 2023, Freshness Comes to the Fore

In the first few weeks of 2023, Sonoma County, California, was deluged with record amounts of rainfall. The Russian River, which winds through western Sonoma County to the Pacific Ocean and plays a fundamental role in what makes Sonoma a great place to grow grapes, was a roaring and muddy mass, carrying giant redwood logs and at one point an entire home that slid off the cliff near the riverside town of Guerneville. Flooding was a daily concern. A Toyota Camry was seen bobbing through a vineyard just off West Side Road.

After three consecutive drought years, the rain was welcome (although maybe not all at once.) Reservoirs were full – and overflowing – for the first time in years. These “atmospheric rivers,” as meteorologists called them, were scary and dramatic for residents at the time, but they would also lay the foundation for an outstanding wine vintage for Sonoma County chardonnay and pinot noir.

The 2023 wines are now available in the marketplace and, as we detail below, are well worth seeking out in terms of both drinkability and ageability. This report includes 831 wines, focused exclusively on the Sonoma County chardonnays and pinot noirs we tasted over the past 12 months, mostly from the 2023 vintage. Well over half these wines scored 94 points or above, with 20 wines earning coveted spots in our recently released Top 100 Wines of the USA 2025 report – including the RAEN Pinot Noir Sonoma County Sonoma Coast Royal St. Robert 2023, which is our American Wine of the Year for 2025 and finished at No. 2 on our Top 100 World Wines 2025 list. Other top producers include Kistler, Peter Michael, Paul Hobbs, Wayfarer, Hirsch, Littorai and Dumol.

Earlier this year we reported on cabernet-based Sonoma wines, but the Burgundian varieties of chardonnay and pinot noir are what Sonoma County is most known for, accounting for 70 percent of total wine production in the region, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s annual Grape Crush Report. These grapes always benefit from the cooling influence of the Pacific Ocean, and in 2023 that coastal influence was amplified, resulting in wines of remarkable distinction.

“The 2023 chardonnay wines have great finesse and purity, with each very faithful to the expression of its site,” Ted Lemon, the founder and winemaker of Littorai, told Executive Editor Jim Gordon. “The wines have the mouthwatering quality of high-acidity years and beautiful length on the palate.”

Pinot noir similarly thrived, according to Jeff Mangahas, the director of winemaking at Williams Selyem, which makes wines from both coastal and river valley vineyards. “In these cool seasons, you have beautiful color, freshness in the aromatics and tannin maturity,” he said.

In general, the 2023 wines are often a full one percent lower in alcohol compared with the 2022 vintage, which saw a dramatic heat dome envelop the region around Labor Day.

Robert Fiore, the winemaker at Peter Michael, which made three of our top-scoring wines, noted how the winter rains in 2023 shaped the vintage early on. “Because of the generous rainfall, there was lots of water in the soil. This, along with cooler weather, delayed bud break by a month.”

A late bloom can be catastrophic if the season also brings early fall heat spikes, like we saw in 2022, or early rainfall. But in 2023, the weather was cool and moderate during the growing season and fruit was able to fully mature thanks to a warm spell in October.

The Peter Michael Winery Chardonnay Sonoma County Knights Valley Belle-Cote 2023 was harvested three weeks later than normal and is vibrant and energized with a silky texture and a melts-in-the-mouth quality.

Perhaps the most compelling and intriguing aspect of the vintage is also what makes it so difficult to generalize. Kistler winemaker Jason Kesner said the site-to-site differentiation in 2023 was the best he had ever seen.

While rainfall drenched the entire North Coast, what happened in the spring depended largely on a vineyard’s proximity to the ocean, with microclimates playing “a very big role” in Sonoma County, according to Chantal Forthun, who has been making wine from Flowers Winery’s extreme coastal sites since 2012.

While yields were certainly affected by the wet spring – Flowers' two estate vineyards, Camp Meeting Ridge and Sea View Ridge, were in the fog for all of June and experienced rainfall during flowering –  Forthun said it was “the best season I have ever worked at Flowers from a wine quality standpoint.”

“It was an exercise in discipline,” Forthun said of the long, cool season that followed. “There was never any pressure to pick. A lot of years, I am playing chicken with the weather – how can we get the last moment of hangtime to accomplish what we want to accomplish, which is to express site – and in 2023 that pressure never came.”

She calls the 2023 wines, which were picked a full month later than average, “pure, snappy, and energetic.” The Flowers Chardonnay Sonoma Coast Camp Meeting Ridge Almar 2023 is complex and structured with a minerally botanical quality and density on the mid-palate. The Flowers Pinot Noir Sea View Ridge 2023 is very earthy with fine-grained tannins. It's not a concentrated wine but it has power in a restrained way.

Similarly, Lemon of Littorai noted that “it was the first time I picked pinot noir in November in a 43-year career,” and that “late vintages produce very interesting wines for aging.”

The Littorai Pinot Noir Sonoma County Sonoma Coast The Haven Vineyard 2023, from their original estate planted in 2001, is bold and structured that builds on moderate, muscular tannins and great, deep fruit flavors.

A Turn in the Vintage

Following the river from the coast further inland to the iconic Williams Selyem estate in the Russian River Valley, the story of the vintage also takes a turn. Overlooking the river valley on a misty morning in November, Mangahas reflected on 2023: “It was a pretty magical vintage,” he said, which began with the welcome rainfall. “Everything grew at the same rate and flowered at the same time so there was more continuity” than in drought years.

Additionally, Mangahas said, the rainwater percolated more quickly on the gravelly, well-drained soils of the river valley and the soil warmed faster than on the coast, leading to earlier bud break – plus, they didn’t experience the late spring marine layer.

“In a year like 2023, our wines have polished tannin,” Mangahas said. “They will still age gracefully because the quality and quantity of the tannin is still significant, but they will be drinkable throughout their entire life. There aren't a lot of elbows.”

The Williams Selyem Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Rochiolo River Block Vineyard 2023 comes from the first single vineyard they made in 1985. Evocative with wild aromas of herbs, spring flowers and stone, the elegant and saturating full body carries notes of iron, roses and crushed mint.

Further south in the county, the story behind the 2023 vintage is still unfolding. Anne Moller-Racke has been growing grapes in Sonoma County for over 20 years, for Donum and now, exclusively, her own winery, Blue Farm. Walking through her home vineyard in Sonoma Valley early in November this year as the vines were changing color and the late afternoon sun was low and bright, she reflected on the 2023 wines and how, counterintuitively, in Sonoma Valley and Carneros berry size was large and yet the wines have beautiful concentration.

“Cellular expansion happens after bunch closing, so you also get thicker skins,” Moller-Racke said. “With more skin you have more pigment. There is a lot of tannin and saturated color in 2023 so they have a depth to them that I think will be really beautiful with age.”

The Blue Farm Pinot Noir Sonoma County Carneros Riverbed 2023 is high-toned and floral yet also rich and spicy with decadent yet bright fruit flavors of plum and pluot and a long finish with taut tannins.

In some years, site matters because it can make a profound difference in the quality of the wine. Yet for Sonoma pinot noir and chardonnay in 2023, quality is nearly a given. County- and appellation-level lines are also overdelivering in part because  fruit has been cheap and available – a silver lining to the downturn in demand.

“The cost of grapes is allowing us to source better vineyards for our entry level wines,” said Rob Fischer of Marine Layer, whose brand Valravn made two of our favorite great-value wines in the report. The same goes from Lioco, whose single-vineyard wines are fantastic. Their Sonoma County-designate chardonnay and pinot, priced under $30, have never been better.

“I think this might be my favorite vintage ever,” said LIOCO founder Matt Licklider, who uses a fair amount of his single-vineyard fruit in the appellation-level wines.

Given the verve, vibrancy and site specificity of these wines, it won't be difficult to find wonderful options for your table or cellar.

– Courtney Humiston, Staff Writer & Taster, with Jim Gordon, Executive Editor

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated by the JamesSuckling.com tasting team. They include many latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon. 

Note: You can sort the wines below by country, vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.