Download PDF

Even before the movie, “Sideways”, brought national attention to the Pinot Noirs of Santa Barbara County, there already was a lot of buzz about the Pinots coming out of the newly established Santa Rita Hills viticultural appellation.

Following the very short vintage of 2003, I felt I needed to expand my Pinot Noir grape sources to ensure an adequate production of wine.  I turned to a new vineyard located on Hwy 246, just two miles or so from the Melville and Babcock vineyards.  It has recently changed hands and is now called Zotovich Family Vineyards.  The vines were very young and correspondingly bore a very small amount of grapes per vine, which produced an intensely flavored wine.

We followed our usual regime of 100% destemming, using small open top fermenters, and a two week fermentation period.  The wine was aged in French oak barrels, with about 25% new oak.  In June 2005, I finalized my blends of the various Pinot Noir lots, and I decided to allocate a sizeable amount of wine from our estate vineyard, Fe Ciega, to blend with the Zotovich Vineyard wine, and create our second Santa Rita Hills blend.

The wine has aromas of black cherries, cigar tobacco with a slightly herbal edge. On the palate, the wine is immediately rich, soft with silky smooth tannins and a long, viscous finish. The flavors are of black fruits with a hint of toasted oak in the background.  This wine is very enjoyable now and will improve with no more than 1 to 2 years of additional bottle aging.

Enjoy with veal, pork in wine reduction sauce, and with your Holiday turkey.

Rick Longoria
Winemaker
October 2005

Composition: 100% Pinot Noir: Zotovich Family Vineyard: 54%
Fe Ciega Vineyard:  46%

Production: 356 cases
Alcohol by volume: 14.6%
pH: 3.68
Titratible acidity:  0 .63 g/100 ml.
back to Our Wines page