2014 Syrah Susan's Hill

Mark and Jeff Pisoni, along with their father Gary, have been taking their estate vineyards and wines to an even higher level of quality in recent vintages, as this year’s set of releases makes clear. The Lucie wines, made by Jeff at the family’s winery up north in Santa Rosa (Mark oversees the vineyards), are heady and seductively perfumed across the portfolio, offering intense fruitiness, serious heft and deft use of new oak. They’re also balanced and structured to age, if one can resist their youthful allure. The Pisoni Vineyard supplies—or has supplied—fruit to a number of California’s premier Pinot Noir producers, including Central Coast wineries like Testarossa, ROAR, Miner and Bernardus, and also to others based in northern California, such as Siduri, Patz & Hall, Peter Michael, Kosta Browne, Capiaux, Flowers and Miura. The 40-acre vineyard is split into 20 different parcels, virtually all Pinot Noir except for a tiny bit of Syrah that’s used to make the Lucie Susan’s Hill bottling. The Pinot is what is called the Pisoni clone, whose origins, according to legend, lie somewhere in Vosne-Romanée. That clone is also planted in the 35-acre Soberanes Vineyard (essentially 27 acres of Pinot Noir and 8 of Chardonnay but also including a bit of Syrah), which was established in 2008 in partnership with the Franscioni family (ROAR), who are long-time friends and neighbors of the Pisonis. The Pisonis are also partners with the Franscionis in the 50-acre Garys’ Vineyard, which they planted in 1996.