Agnitio Sun Chase Vineyard Pinot Noir 2013
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After decades of cultivating the Napa Valley’s most celebrated industry, the Belli and Cybulski families created Agnitio Wines to pay tribute to the land and honor their devoted farming team. From Chardonnay to Cabernet Sauvignon, the partners are dedicated to making wines that reflect the unique character and quality of the vineyard sites they farm.
Diana Gelow Cybulski and Diane Messner Belli both grew up in California’s Napa Valley, while their husbands Mike Cybulski and Barry Belli have each spent more than 15 years working with premium wine and grapes. The families created the Together We GrowTM scholarship fund to give back to the farm workers and their families as well as cultivate future leaders of the wine industry.
The partners prize stewardship of the land in an effort to create a better future for the next generation of Napa Valley farmers: their children.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
A vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.