Seldom do small family wineries do things just for the "hell of it". (Excuse my salty language there.) Actually, I take that back. Big business seldom does things just for the "heck of it". There are focus groups, consumer trials, test audiences, political surveys, and soft releases to dip the proverbial toe into the scary world of new products.
Yep, as a small business, we don't do any of that. Instead, we make what we like and then hope others like it too! And thus the start to the story of Madroña's Pinot Noir. (Full transparency, it should be called "Maggie's Pinot", but we'll get to that part of the story presently.)
The impetus of our producing one of the wine-world's most difficult wines was not some sort of challenge. We already make Nebbiolo (considered by many to be the other "most" challenging variety), so making another difficult variety was not a "bucket list" experience. (I need therapy, but not that much therapy!). No, instead it happens that Pinot Noir is one of Maggie's favorite varieties. But alas, she finds California expressions of Pinot to be over-extracted and often too fruity (with a certain kind of jammy Pinoty fruit).
However, Pinot Noirs from Burgundy, France have all the complexity with hints of spice and copious amounts of strawberry and light cherry fruit. Alas, as simple winery owners, we don't make enough money to actually afford good Burgundian Pinot.
The answer? Well, let's make Pinot ourselves. So in 2008, we asked Hugh Chappelle (our wine guru who happened to have worked at two phenomenal Pinot producers) which clones to put in here at our high elevation vineyards. We grafted in two rows of Pinot Noir to make a single barrel each year. The first vintage (2009) was beautiful and the second vintage (2010) was amazing. But as the bottles piled up, Maggie then let me know that she couldn't drink 24 cases of Pinot Noir every year (that's 3/4 of a bottle of Pinot every night...and she likes other wines too!).
So for many years, we made a handful of cases for Rucksack of Maggie's Pinot for those "in the know". However, with Douglas and Mary now owning Rucksack Cellars and Maggie (and myself) still wanting to make a more complex style of Pinot Noir (that we can drink whenever we want), it was time to bring the Pinot Noir back to Madroña.
Thus, you will see below that we are releasing the 2023 Signature Pinot Noir this Saturday evening at our release party. A true small-lot production at just 22 cases and 5 bottles (and only 19 cases and 8 bottles left right now...partly due to our drinking it), you may not want to wait too long to get yours. But, read the description below as it's much more old-world styled than tutti-fruity.
And now you understand how new ideas flow here (and why Maggie and I are going to the Vinho Verde region of Portugal this year, and why we're grafting in Alvarinho (Albariño) into the vineyards here). It's because we want to, and life is about having more fun (with wine!).