2018 Pinot Noir SWK Vineyard

The 2018s from Occidental are simply magnificent. That's pretty much all there is to it. Steve and Catherine Kistler describe 2018 as a year with a long growing season. The relaxed, drawn-out harvest allowed for smaller picks and more time to sort. It was the first year Steve Kistler was fully at his new Occidental property and winery. In the cellar, Kistler opted to work with mostly destemmed fruit and gave the wines more time on the skins than normal. The result is deep, flavorful wines that combine fruit intensity at relatively low sugars with intense saline minerality, the signatures that make the best Pinots from the West Sonoma Coast so thrilling. I found all the 2018s improved materially with aeration, so I would open them well in advance. Lastly, I did not taste the 2019 Freestone-Occidental Pinot, as that wine was bottled later than usual because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. I will report on that wine as soon as I have a chance to taste it. In the meantime, readers will not want to miss the Occidental 2018s. They are reference point wines for an emerging appellation that one day may very well be viewed as iconic bottlings by future generations.