2013 Joseph Phelps Pastorale Vineyard Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 750 ml

Insignia might be the iconic Joseph Phelps winery’s flagship bottle, but the Pastorale Vineyard Pinot Noir is their stealth star—and it’s been dazzling Sonoma Coast Pinot fans for the last decade-plus. Delivering the kind of quality expected of superstars like Kosta Browne and Williams Selyem, Phelps’ Pinot from their sea-sprayed outpost is a bona fide steal—even at its $75 sticker price.  

Our friendship with Will Phelps—grandson of founder Joseph Phelps—earned us a recent trip to the winery’s Sonoma Coast cellar, and we’ve emerged with one of the Pinot deals of the year: the perfectly aged 2013 Pastorale Pinot Noir at just $45,a no-brainer bargain on this iconic winery’s under-the-radar superstar.

The 2013 Pastorale Vineyard Pinot Noir is exactly what you want a California Pinot to be after seven years in the cellar. Showing a dusty ruby core in the glass, it’s aromatic and expressive, dominated by ripe red fruit and dried flowers, accented by black tea and incense with some Asian spice that will have Burgundy lovers’ heads swimming with memories of Échézeaux. An elegant mouthfeel earned in the cellar is powerful enough to give you goosebumps. As Wine Enthusiast wrote in their Editors’ Choice review, it can give you an “appreciation for how velvety a wine can be."

Joseph Phelps is closely associated with Bordeaux varieties, but that’s not what they set out to do. In fact, their Insignia—a 40-year stalwart Bordeaux-style wine—was first imagined as the finest wine they could make in a vintage, regardless of variety.

That wide-ranging interest is in the Phelps DNA, and it’s what sent them in the mid-1990s from their home in Napa Valley to the Sonoma Coast: They sought to renew their quest to find a perfect place to grow Pinot Noir. They’d made Pinot in the past, but Joe was never completely happy with the results they’d gotten from Carneros, so they looked farther afield. Finally, they settled in the western Sonoma County town of Freestone, where very few vineyards existed at the time. 

Sitting just about ten miles from the coast, there was talk of the Freestone area’s potential—it had Sonoma County’s coveted Goldridge soils and cooling fog—but most of the land was either forest or used for pasture. That didn’t deter Phelps. In 1999, the winery bet big by purchasing a fog-shrouded property, and working to turn it into a vineyard. By the time they produced their first Pinot Noir in 2007, they had 100 acres, and a gravity-flow winery perfect for handling the delicate grape.  

The site proved itself as something special from the start, and by the time they made this 2013, they had hit a serious stride in Sonoma County. Made with 35% whole clusters for spice, texture, and tannin, the Pinot was aged for 13 months in 55% new French oak, then bottled in late 2014. Now with six more years of age, it’s showing the kind of character that you expect from the cult Pinots of the California coast—a true cellar steal from our good friends at Phelps. Don’t miss it.