2022 Bernardus Winery Pinot Noir Sierra Mar Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands 750 ml

Dean De Korth spent his formative years in Burgundy—working harvests at Olivier Leflaive in Puligny-Montrachet and Domaine des Comtes Lafon—before returning to the Central Coast, where he’s spent two decades at Bernardus building one of California’s finest Pinot Noir programs. The single-vineyard bottlings are where that work shows most clearly, and none more so than the Sierra Mar.

Gary Franscioni is a fourth-generation Central Coast farmer whose vineyards have shaped the reputation of the Santa Lucia Highlands as a serious Pinot region. His Garys’ Vineyard and home ranch Rosella’s long ago achieved near-mythic status among California Pinot lovers. When demand outpaced supply, Franscioni looked to a hillside he’d inherited from his mother’s side of the family.

He planted Sierra Mar in 2007: a dramatic hilltop at 1,100 feet on the southern edge of the Highlands, rocky and nutrient-poor, often rising above the marine fog layer that defines the appellation below. The Pacific wind off Monterey Bay is relentless, and the soils give the vines nothing easy.

Bernardus is among the very few producers with access to the fruit. The blocks De Korth works are planted to 100% Pisoni clone—a selection of exceptional renown, originally cultivated at the Pisoni family estate farther up in the Highlands—and Franscioni farms them with the same attention he brings to all his properties.

The winemaking is as Burgundian as the training that informs it. Grapes arrive hand-picked and hand-sorted, destemmed and fermented with whole berries to preserve expressive fruit character. Twice-daily punch-downs and pump-overs build structure gradually; after a gentle press, the wine spends 10 months in Sirugue and Billon French oak—at 35% new—before De Korth assembles the final blend.

The 2022 vintage ran warm and dry across the Highlands, delivering lower yields and concentrating the fruit that remained. Sierra Mar’s elevation and the persistent Monterey wind held the freshness and tension that distinguish this site from its neighbors at lower altitude. De Korth picked late—October 4th and 8th—and the patience shows in a wine that is precise and lifted rather than heavy.