94 pts Vinous
Drinking Window 2025 - 2037
The 2022 Pinot Noir Estate Scallop Shelf is a gorgeous, wonderfully translucent wine. Bright aromatics, lively acids and vibrant saline notes give the Scallop Shelf its distinctive personality. Crushed red cherry fruit, mint, orange peel, white pepper and chalk all race across the palate. This energetic Pinot is impeccably done. It’s a first-class wine from Peay. - By Antonio Galloni on January 2024 There’s a ton to focus on in these new releases from Peay. The 2022 whites are beautiful, elegant wines, while the Pinots capture all the best the vintage had to offer. Turning to the 2021 Syrahs, both wines are superb. The wines are done with a light hand. Fermentations are mostly native. The Pinots see some stem inclusion. Time in barrel for the Chardonnays and Pinots is about eleven months, with no racking prior to bottling. The Syrahs see about 16 months in wood. What I am most drawn to here is the purity of the wines. Peay does not bottle vineyard-designated wines, but rather, each wine is best described as a cuvée with a specific style. Maintaining that style and each wine’s personality year after year is not easy, but it is a signature here. Readers should note there are no Elanus offerings in 2022.

When preparing the vineyard for planting, we found scallop and nautilus fossils in our soils. We researched the geology of the region and learned that we farm in an outcropping of marine soils. Our hilltop was a former sea-bed.  When you stand on our porch and look south you will notice the former ocean bed forms a shelf where the Wheatfield Fork of the Gualala River has cut a path to the coast. I have hiked off the southern end of the vineyard and you have to hold on to trees to keep from sliding down the hill to the river 600 feet below. Steep. That river is our conduit to the Pacific Ocean. The fog sneaks up the river valley to embrace, if not downright smother, the vineyard in the evenings. Around noon the coastal wind blows bringing cool wind dropping temperatures into the 60s on average. So, the shelf is key to our micro-climate.