Dutton-Goldfield Pinot Noir Red Wine

The grape is the honest place to start with this one, since Pinot Noir is the part of the name the guides can actually speak to. Our grape research calls it a red variety with fairly thin skins, at home both in still reds and, as one of the main grapes, in many traditional-method sparkling wines. For a still red like this one, the category guides we rely on commonly reach for red cherry, berry and plum, and they note lighter color and less tannin than Cabernet Sauvignon, with the caution that site and ripeness can carry it anywhere from bright and delicate to darker and fuller.

We do not have a shopper rating for this wine, and where the wines shoppers have rated show a middle score of 4.71, this bottle has no score of its own; the price we saw was $49.99 in our September 2026 checks.

So if you are choosing for a table, lean on the grape rather than a score: the guides put Pinot Noir on the lighter, red-fruited side of the reds, with the reminder that site and ripeness can shift where it lands. Beyond the grape, the winery's own account is what anchors this bottle, and Dutton-Goldfield says it was founded in 1998 by Steve Dutton and Dan Goldfield in Sonoma County's Russian River Valley.

Dutton-Goldfield's own copy for its Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, the producer's base, non-vineyard-designated tier and the closest match on the producer's site to a generic “Dutton-Goldfield Pinot Noir,” ties the wine to the region's well-drained Goldridge soils and describes a style built for “immediate charm and freshness,” the producer's words, rather than the fuller weight of the winery's vineyard-designated bottlings. The winery's account of its founders adds detail behind the 1998 partnership: Steve Dutton is a fifth-generation Russian River Valley grower whose father began planting there in the 1960s, and Dan Goldfield trained as an enologist at UC Davis and worked at Robert Mondavi Winery and Schramsberg before co-founding the winery. The producer's site also lists a separate, vineyard-designated Dutton Ranch Pinot Noir under a similar name; we have not confirmed which of the two tiers matches the bottle sold under this listing, so we describe only the base tier here.

Our call: pick it if the grape and a well-documented growers' story carry enough weight on their own; Dutton-Goldfield names a specific cool-climate appellation and a founding partnership between a longtime grower and a trained enologist, and the base tier is styled deliberately for easy, immediate drinking. Pass if you need the bottle's exact tier confirmed before you buy; the producer sells at least two differently named Pinot Noir tiers, and we have not confirmed which one this listing matches.

The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Sep 16, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.