We produced our first Blanc de Noir still wine in 2019 from estate-grown Pinot Noir grapes. We decided to produce the wine in a similar fashion as our best Chardonnay—barrel fermented in a mixture of new and seasoned French oak barrels—and the results exhibit more complex flavors than a wine produced from Chardonnay grapes. Another of our motivations was the tragic reality that California wildfires seem to be limiting the vintages of red wine that we can produce as the drought continues to weaken our forests. 2020 was one of those vintages in which red wine production was limited except for a handful of sites where the grapes were ripe before smoke became a problem. Our fields in the coolest sites—many that historically produced our best red Pinot—were smoke affected. Rather than producing a smoke-tainted red we decided to craft a smoke-free white wine with no red grape skin contact.

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