2013 The Ojai Vineyard Pinot Noir Bien Nacido Vineyard 750 ml

Kevin Spacey, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks … and the Wizard of Ojai

We’re not really sure how many collectors Adam Tolmach “entertains” each summer. But it’s not many. We have dozens of well-heeled friends in NYC who have spent entire afternoons at Peter Michael, Kistler, and Kosta Browne. All have been sipping Tolmach’s exquisite Ojai Pinot Noirs for years. Yet not one has managed to nail down a cellar tour and tasting with the iconoclastic and reclusive Wizard of Ojai.

Count us — and the Hollywood couple in the Tesla P85D — among the fortunate few.

When we first met Adam, he and Jim Clendenen were just starting out at Au Bon Climat, fashioning single-vineyard Pinots that rocked the California wine world. Both guys were brilliant, though marching to quite different drummers. When the duo split up, the commercially minded Clendenen kept Au Bon Climat and expanded. Adam, the quiet one, moved to the house he and his brother had built for their parents in the early 1980s, and erected, by hand, three refrigerated barns that would serve as a modest winery in the hills above Ojai.

Only one thing surprised us when we pulled into the driveway, where the basketball hoop still hangs about 4 inches too low. It wasn’t the barns. Neither the winery or the barrel rooms had changed an iota. No, the only thing that really surprised us as we popped out of our Hertz Corolla was the Tesla. It seemed Adam had company.

Tolmach, eyes as bright as ever, still with that unmistakable head full of corkscrew hair, greeted us at the door and offered us spots at the kitchen table. Already seated in front of a half-dozen Zalto Universal stems were Adam’s other guests. One glance at the couple and we knew that while our uber-rich friends from NYC couldn’t land an appointment at Ojai, the same couldn’t be said of two of Hollywood’s most recognizable kingpins.

If you’ve never spent 2-3 hours with a table full of Ojai single-vineyard Pinot Noirs, particularly from an extraordinary vintage like 2013, you’re missing out on an olfactory experience of Vosne-like precision. Like the greatest names of Burgundy, Adam was his own worst critic, finding faults where we found none. Tolmach spoke quietly about his hand-selected block at Bien Nacido, how he contracted by the acre, not the ton, so that he could have his block custom-farmed to his own specifications. As we sipped this exquisite, wild-berry Pinot Noir from that unusually hot growing season, Adam credited his success in 2013 to his decision to begin picking in late August — one of the earliest calls to harvest in memory.

By 4pm, the ice was broken at the Ojai kitchen table. When the conversation turned to film, Adam’s guests couldn’t have been more forthcoming. We spoke of Hanks, Spacey, and Streep, of their Oscars, of other leading ladies and men. Adam, we sensed, was doing his best to be polite, feigning interest. Sipping, swirling, and sniffing his 2013 Bien Nacido, the Wizard of Ojai was dreaming. His mind had wandered off. Where he’d gone … nobody knew.

The 2013 Ojai Pinot Noir Bien Nacido Vineyard is brilliant dark-ruby in hue. Pungent aromas of black raspberry, black cherry, and wild strawberry, complicated by sweet herbs and anise. Rich, juicy, and light on its feet, richly textured and with laser-like precision, filled with wild-berry intensity, finishing with terrific length and persistence. Drink now for its sheer beauty in youth or, like all of Tolmach’s great single-vineyard Pinots, lay this one down for 7-10 years.

$45 per bottle. 120 bottles. Last call.