2020 Dragonette Cellars Pinot Noir Radian Vineyard Sta. Rita Hills 750 ml

The first time we visited Dragonette Cellars in Santa Rita Hills, we fell deeply in love with their Radian Vineyard Pinot Noir, which goes almost exclusively to their mailing list, along with a few select restaurants.

The quality of the fruit from Radian Vineyard is so impressive that the owners of Screaming Eagle bought the site in 2015, but Dragonette continues to work with six distinct vineyard blocks. In 2020, they hit another one out of the park. Jeb Dunnuck flipped for this wine, scoring it 95+ and saying “Dragonette Cellars continues to produce some of the greatest wines in the vintage…both their Pinot Noirs and Syrahs are world-class.”

A couple days after New Year’s 2017, we made our first trip south to “one of the most fascinating wineries in the Central Coast,” making “truly world class” wines—as Vinous founder Antonio Galloni described Dragonette. When we arrived at the winery, we found co-owners and co-winemakers John Dragonette and Brandon Sparks-Gillis deep in the middle of moving barrels around. The terms “handcrafted” and “small-production” are bandied about right and left these days, but it isn’t often that you encounter owners making the wine and doing all the unglamorous cellar work.

Radian Vineyard sits on the former Rancho Salsipuedes site (loosely translated to "get out while you can”). Radian is a challenging, cold, windy site, where vines dig into crushed white rocks—ancient diatomaceous soils that contain large chunks as light as feathers. The plants struggle in these conditions, producing tiny clusters of small berries that yield a concentrated but perfectly fresh wine with a racy brightness. It’s take-your-breath-away good Pinot Noir.