2017 Domaine Faury-Gros Pinot Noir Siebert Vineyard Sonoma Coast

The 2017 Domaine Faury-Gros Siebert Vineyard Pinot Noir is a California cult bottling in the making.

It was made in a tiny five-barrel quantity from a single vineyard block, and it shows the restraint, nervous tension, and longevity you’d expect from top Vosné–Romanée. Word-of-mouth buzz around this release has been building, and Jeb Dunnuck’s 94-point review jacked the volume way up.

“This smoking Pinot Noir has one foot in California and one foot in Burgundy,” wrote Dunnuck, citing the “beautifully feral, Burgundian bouquet” and characterizing this Sonoma micro-cuvée as “a hidden little gem of a wine.”

We’re thrilled to have landed a Pinot Noir that is so rare both in its style and quantity, but what makes this offer doubly irresistible is the deal we secured. Thanks to our friendship with winemaker Simon Faury, we have it at HALF off the list price: just $40 per bottle, down from $80! That’s a scorching deal for a truly beautiful Pinot Noir that melds what we love best about Old World and New World expressions of this grape. Here as long as our allocation lasts.

Our first exposure to this remarkable Siebert Vineyard bottling came when Simon, then winemaker at top Napa property Merryvale Vineyards, invited us over on a rare snowy winter day. A protégé of Philippe Melka, he’d come to California in 2010 and worked at Harlan Estate and Robert Mondavi, but this day was all about Pinot—and one he slid across the table stopped us in our tracks. The delicately proportioned balance was just incredible, and we inquired (possibly using a four-letter word or two to convey our enthusiasm) what in the world we were drinking.

“I made it,” he said, and launched into the story behind what would become Domaine Faury-Gros. Raised in France with roots in Burgundy, Simon found it odd that in the United States, Pinot is often thought of as a delicate variety. At dinner tables in Lyon and Beaune, Burgundy is poured alongside Bordeaux without batting an eyelid. The tension, depth, and power of the wine is such that it goes with practically anything. He set out to make Pinot with that kind of pluck and muscle in the U.S.

Stéphane Vivier of Hyde de Villaine pointed Simon toward the Siebert Vineyard, a hillside plot with a soulful grittiness. The soil was rocky, with thinly distributed topsoil and a limited ability to hold water. While not technically dry-farmed, irrigation was sparse, a few times a year at most, promoting low-vigor vines. Because the yields from the site were so low, it barely made sense economically for the Siebert family. But it was perfect for what Simon had in mind.

“I often describe the relationship between soil and wine as: the more soil you have, the more flesh the wine has. So if you have a lot of rocks, the wine is going to be bony—it’s going to show that power and tension naturally. That’s what we got from the Siebert block.”

The vineyard’s Pommard clones contribute to the high-wire energy as well, with higher tannins that cut through all the opulence of the California sunshine. In 2017, in order to keep freshness, Simon picked early, on the second day of what would become an intense heat wave. That extra dose of warmth resolved itself in this wine’s silky, supple tannins and New World feel, with beautifully integrated oak.

Now 50% off in a very limited Wine Access exclusive, the kind of Pinot that Simon grew up drinking, sculpted on Sonoma soils, can be on your dinner table for just $40 per bottle.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 13.90%
• Enjoy right away
• Now – 2030
• % Pinot Noir
• Serving temperature – 58°
• Cork