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 And now for something completely different!  Andy Smith, is a veteran winemaker of Scottish descent with a resume that includes working for several producers in Burgundy before coming to America and meeting with and then working for Paul Hobbs. Paul, who also has a consulting gig in addition to making his own wines was, in 1999, asked to look after the DuMOL wines, bringing their then very-small production to the Laird Family winery in Napa.  How that came about is a long story that involved DuMOL’s original founder, the late Max Gasiewicz (the name DuMOL comes from Duane and MOLly, Max’s children), whose sudden, ultimately terminal, illness forced his financial partners- Michael Verlander (founder of PRIMA!) and Kerry Murphy- to hire winemaker Merry Edwards to finish the winery’s 1998 vintage and, after that, asking Hobbs to work with the wines on a longer-term basis.  Andy was the guy lugging the hoses and punching the Pinot down for Paul, and it wasn’t long before Michael and Kerry- loving the results- conspired to hire Andy away from Paul and make him DuMOL’s fulltime guy.  Fast forward a decade or so and the last man standing in all of this is Andy, now a full partner in the business and making the best wines of his career.  One thing you have to know about Andy, though, is that, though he loves making wines like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (and does an amazing job at it, by the way), he has a very old-world palate and loves the Nebbiolo grape almost as much as us.  In fact, we have, over the years, sold him quite a bit of it while he, over the years, has sold us a boatload of DuMOL!  Anyway, when Andy was offered a chance to actually make some Nebbiolo from a small vineyard on June Mountain, on the Sonoma side of Spring Mountain near Fisher Vineyards, he jumped at the chance.  Naming it ‘Il Gurro’ after a village near Lake Garda that’s long been populated largely by ex-patriot Scots, he decided to ferment 30% of the grapes on their whole clusters (being a fan of Burlotto) and crushed the grapes completely by foot, aging it then for 32 months in older puncheons, the 450-gallon barrels he chose in lieu of having the much larger casks traditionally used in producing Barolo and Barbaresco.  I have to confess to being a little skeptical at first because my other opportunities to taste Californian Nebbiolo have left me that way.  And though I’m probably more a purist than most, the fact remains that Nebbiolo remains one of the most site-dependent grapes I’ve ever experienced, but, lo and behold, Andy’s Nebbiolo was magnificent!  Darker and a little richer on the palate than you might find in a classic Barolo, it’s more reminiscent of a wine made at, say, Elio Altare rather than at a Bartolo Mascarello but, that being said, all of Nebbiolo’s fine spice and camphor aromatics are there, as well as its natural life-giving acidity and finishing thwack of tannin.  Interestingly enough, we tasted the DuMOL Nebbiolo on the same day as another vendor brought us a bunch of different Barolos and Barbarescos to try, and this was the wine of the afternoon!  Who knew?  Anyway, a phone call to Andy later and PRIMA has become the sole source of this wine- other than, maybe, a few lucky members of DuMOL’s mailing list.  Enjoy it now alongside a nice grilled pork bathed in a sauce of morel mushrooms and see what all the fuss about Nebbiolo is all about!  Delish!!!!