2016 Marimar Estate Mas Cavalls Pinot Noir Dona Margarita Vineyard Sonoma Coast 750 ml

If you do much shopping for Pinot Noir, you know how rare it is to find truly great wines for $35. That’s why we suspect this Doña Margarita Pinot, with its delicate dried cherry aromas and dusty tannins, will go very quickly.

Crafted by a scion of one of Spain’s most famous winemaking families, the Mas Cavalls bottling normally sells for at least $49 a bottle. And that was the original asking price—but the buyer who first secured these few dozen cases was ultimately unable to hold up their end of the bargain.

We couldn’t feel luckier that Marimar’s next call was to us, with a deal that you almost never see for wines of this estate-grown breeding. Today, it's $35 for the wine James Suckling praised for its “laid-back, sweet, rose-like perfume and a swathe of rich, ripe and supple fruit.”

A single-vineyard Pinot of this intense quality, grown just six miles from the sea in a high-density plot, simply does not come at a bargain price often. Just look to the competition in Sonoma: Similar single-site offerings from Hirsch or Paul Hobbs run $75 to $100 a bottle. This spice-scented Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, a silky marvel of rose-petal purity with a touch of forest floor wildness, has burst from the bounds of its typical price category.

Marimar Torres, the willful, visionary woman behind this renowned estate, hails from a winemaking legacy in Spain that carries the same historical weight and pedigree that Robert Mondavi does here. Constrained by the upper-class mores of her aristocratic life in Europe, Torres made off for the sunny, freer climes of California, purchasing land in the Russian River Valley in the 1980s.  

Her wines made a splash from the estate’s first vintage in 1991, stamped by the same vigor and elegance that defines Torres. Her second vineyard, named Doña Margarita after her mother, was planted in 2002 and 2008: 20 acres of Pinot Noir exposed to the brisk winds of the Pacific, less than ten miles away. Situated on the Bohemian Highway, between Freestone and Occidental, this is prime Pinot Noir real estate, the kind of land that winemakers fight over.

Advised by her brothers to plant at the same high densities as they do in Europe, Torres—at great expense—installed roughly 2,300 vines per acre, creating competition between plants that results in finesse and greater concentration in the fruit. Well-draining Goldridge sandy loam, marine sediment, and sandstone subsoil contribute to the fine mineral detail of this Pinot, which continues to unlock flavors even after an hour in the glass.