Ground shipping included on 6 bottles or more

New vintage alert!
If you didn’t take advantage of the 2022 at a great price earlier this summer, you can know get the even better 2023 for the same cost! And you thought procrastination was bad?

We first met Kenneth Juhasz some 20 years ago at a Pinot Noir festival of some sort up in the Russian River Valley. Kenneth, a refugee from Hungary with a background making Pinot Noir in New Zealand, Burgundy and Oregon, had a crowd around his table, all anxious to try the wine everyone was talking about- the much-anticipated debut vintage of Auteur. It was as sensational as advertised! And, even though Auteur has grown a bit from a single bottling of Sonoma Coast Pinot, Kenneth is still making some of California’s best artisanal Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs from some of its most vaunted cool climate vineyards. The secret is, as always, in the grapes- the wines of Auteur are sourced from sites on the North Coast with iconic names like Bacigalupi, Campbell Ranch, Durell, Ferrington, Gaps Crown and Hyde. With great raw material comes great potential, and, in all of my many years of trying various Auteur Pinot Noirs (and Chardonnays), Kenneth and his small band of loyal passionistas that work with him have never failed to produce a beautifully made, characterful wine. Like a lot of top wineries who follow the Burgundian mode of producing single wines from these top vineyards, Auteur also bottles an abundance of single-site offerings but, as is my wont, I usually gravitate towards the blends- cuvees that take the strengths of each of these unique sites and artfully combine them into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. That’s the other secret at Auteur- great winemaking!

The just-released 2023 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, for example, is a wonderful case in point. Made from a secret sauce of top sites along the cool, foggy Sonoma Coast, I am guessing that bright, fresh, nicely concentrated red fruit comes from Hyde and Bacigalupi, while the wine’s super savory notes, complex black tea aromatics and anise-y spice might hail from windy, chilly sites like Gaps Crown and Durell, but what do I know? What we can tell you, it’s a charmingly articulated, particularly elegant rendering of Pinot that’s long on its flattering bouquet and impresses for the impeccable way it balances its innate ‘Californianess’ with a sort of Burgundian finesse, energy and complexity. A thoroughly enjoyable, mouthwatering Pinot that really shows its Sonoma’s coastal roots off to their best advantage, drink it tonight with some grilled lamb chops and don’t skimp on herbs like rosemary and thyme to bring out all that extra deliciousness in the wine! 600 cases produced.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED AND ONE OF THE BEST PINOT NOIR VALUES WE’LL SEE THIS YEAR.