2024 Chad Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 750 ml

“$%*@#ing Chat-GPT”

Chad didn’t even bother with a hello. And boy was he in a mood.

“Used to be, I could give you some hints,” he continued, “and you could sorta sprinkle ‘em in your emails or whatnot, and people miiiight have an idea, or they might not.”

We’d just showed up at the Santa Rosa strip-mall burger joint that Chad was using as his office for the afternoon. A half-eaten burger and basket of chilli-cheese french fries were slowly disappearing, but most of his table was covered—laptop, hotspot, a few spiral notebooks. 

He’d clearly been waiting all day—maybe all month—to vent about this. “Here I am, with a few barrels of prime Sonoma Pinot,” though, Chad’s tone suggested they were more than just prime, “and I keep plugging things into this GPT thing, and it keeps telling me where I got the wine from.”

“I need to keep a secret to keep getting these wines, and you need to let people know how good they are.” He continued, “I don’t know how we’re gonna keep doing this.”

He went on to explain the degree of his big score: Names like Kistler, DuMOL, and Kosta Browne all tapped this grower for exceptional Pinot Noir grapes, and the wines with the name on the label went for big bucks. “But you can’t print anything else,” he grumped, “cuz each little fact is a damn tripwire for the GPT.”

Based on what he told us, we said we’d likely take a sizable lot, but of course we had to try the wine. When we did, we doubled our order.