Label: Whitcraft Winery
Winemaker: Drake Whitcraft
Vintage: 2019
Fruit: Pinot Noir
Region: Santa Barbara, California, United States
ABV: 12.25%
strawberry moon / endless shiver / all the rivers born in the mountains
It's somewhat magical how a plot of vines can have it's own personality and narrative. It's just a pile of dirt and grass and leaves and fruit on this stupid rock spinning around in space, but it is complete and meaningful and ever evolving. Steinbeck should write something about that maybe? This particular plot in the Sta. Rita Hills was planted in 1971 and some haters thought it would never ripen grapes. But here we are and those haters are probably dead or dying. Pence Ranch's 2021 progeny is the Platonic ideal of a Pinot Noir, bringing red fruit, forest floor and greek salad herbs. Pairs well with finishing a book with a really good ending.
Drake Whitcraft makes beautifully balanced, site-specific wines in his low-fi Santa Barbara winery. He gets his grapes from sought after sites like Pence, La Rinconada and Stolpman, and makes all his wines in a hands on, low-intervention way - describing himself as a wine shepherd more than a winemaker. His parents Chris and Kathleen started Whitcraft Winery in 1985, what began as a hobby grew into a passion. Drake grew up surrounded by the culture of food and wine in California, and was lucky enough to learn both from his dad and good friend Burt Williams, founder of Williams-Selyem winery in Sonoma. When Drake took over in 2007, he started to source fruit from cooler climate sites, which worked organically as a minimum, and introduced biodynamic practices at the winery. He ferments whole-bunch, there are no pump-overs and wines age on the lees. He fills and corks every bottle by hand after adding just enough SO2 to stabilise the wines. The resulting wines are clean and beautifully balanced. They represent a cross section of the emerging class of site-specific wines coming out of Central Coast California today.
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The Whitcraft Winery story is as wholesome and apple pie-American (in the good way) as a Beach Boy's song. Chris and Kathleen Whitcraft started the winery in 198. As the host of a local wine radio show, they gradually gleaned tips and techniques from the best California winemakers, and now they have passed the farm on to their children Drake and Alyssa. Despite how gosh darned cute this all is, their website and branding is refreshingly straightforward and humble, while wine is all hot-dogging and grandstanding (in the good way.) Working with a few classic varietals (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Trousseau, Syrah and Grenache) with minimal intervention and regenerative viticulture, using electric power only when necessary, thier wines prove exactly what all the fuss is about when it comes to site specific terroir and the magic of California wine.
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Please note, all orders come with chips!
