2023 Shunyi Cellars Pinot Noir Sta Lucia Highlands 750 ml

Byron Kosuge is the winemaker other winemakers call when they have a question about Pinot Noir. He spent fifteen years at Saintsbury in Carneros—one of California’s foundational cool-climate producers—before leaving in 2001 to consult full-time. His current roster spans ambitious projects from Sonoma to Santa Barbara to Chile, and the list of producers who’d like his attention is longer than the list of those who have it.

For ShunYi’s Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot, that talent is focused on McIntyre Vineyard, in what proprietor Steve McIntyre calls the “sweet spot” of the SLH—a 12-mile stretch of benchland in the central section of the appellation. The vineyard was first planted in 1973, giving it some of the oldest Pinot Noir vines in the Highlands. McIntyre purchased the property in 1987 and has spent nearly four decades farming it toward the highest standard the site can achieve, earning one of the appellation’s earliest SIP sustainability certifications along the way.

Kosuge’s connection to McIntyre Vineyard predates ShunYi—he had been consulting for the estate long before founder George Zhang came looking for serious Pinot fruit.

The 2023 vintage in the Santa Lucia Highlands was defined by patience. Record winter rainfall—the most the region had seen in decades—charged the soils and drove exceptional vine vigor, requiring growers to thin fruit aggressively through spring and into summer. The summer stayed persistently mild, slowing sugar accumulation and pushing harvest nearly a month behind the prior vintage, the latest the Highlands had seen since 1999. Extended hang time in a cool year builds acidity, deepens phenolic complexity, and delivers a brightness that a warmer season cannot replicate.

Zhang grew up in Jinan, China—hometown, by tradition, of Emperor Shun, a ruler revered for wisdom and integrity, and the source of the winery’s name: “Shun Yi” means descendants of Shun. He emigrated to the US as a teenager and found his way into wine through banking in Napa. The Pinot Noir is called “Chong Feng,” to reunite, after Zhang’s memory of being separated from his father as a child and the moment they came back together at a train station.