2021 Metzker Pinot Noir Winemaker's Cuvee Sonoma Coast 750 ml

The fruit in Metzker's Winemaker's Cuvée comes from ground that California's best Pinot producers fight over. It's a barrel selection of the top lots from three of the Sonoma Coast's most sought-after sites, blended into a single wine.

Thorn Ridge sits in the hills southwest of Sebastopol, dry-farmed on Goldridge soils that catch the cold sea air and fog coming off the Pacific. It's the kind of site that gets bottled on its own—Kosta Browne makes a single-vineyard wine from it—and the fruit brings structure and a wild, savory edge.

Terra de Promissio is a 50-acre ranch where the Sonoma Coast and the Petaluma Gap overlap, farmed by Charles and Diana Karren since 1999. The wind and fog that funnel through the Gap stretch the growing season late, concentrating the fruit without sacrificing the bright acidity that gives great Pinot its backbone. Williams Selyem, Kistler, and Gary Farrell all source here. Arnoud, from the Russian River's Middle Reach, rounds things out with a little more warmth and flesh.

Metzker Family Estates was founded in 2014 by Mike Metzker, a Sacramento native and UC Davis biochemistry graduate who went on to earn a PhD in molecular and human genetics. His day job has kept him at the forefront of genomic medicine for decades. His other obsession—sourcing fruit from the finest vineyards in Napa and Sonoma and letting terroir do the talking—led to this wine.

Winemaker John Martin came up through Paul Hobbs, Gloria Ferrer, Chalk Hill, and Sebastiani before landing at Metzker. For this Cuvée he fermented 20% whole cluster to build aromatic complexity, then aged the wine 15 months in 65% new French oak. That's a lot of new wood for Pinot Noir, and early on you'd have known it. With a few years in bottle, the oak has resolved into the wine—structure without the seams showing.

The 2021 growing season on the Sonoma Coast was a quiet one, in the best sense. A dry winter and an even summer with no real heat spikes let the fruit ripen slowly, and smaller berries meant lower yields and more concentration.