99-100 Point RAEN Mailing-List-Only-Releases. Dante Mondavi Opened
the Family Cellar for Us.

Dear Artisans,

Having Dante Mondavi at our table this past Saturday was an honour. He is the third generation of the most storied family in American wine, grandson of Robert and son of Tim of Continuum, and he and his brother Carlo founded RAEN in 2013 on the far western edge of the Sonoma Coast to see whether the family could do to Pinot Noir what it had already done to Cabernet. Twelve years on, RAEN is making some of the highest-scored Pinot in America.

We planned it carefully. Twenty-four bottles of each wine, split across two sessions, enough for everyone to take something home.

The first session bought all of it.

Not most of it. All of it. People tasted, went quiet, and started buying by the case before the glasses were cleared. By the time the room emptied we had nothing left to pour for the four o'clock, let alone sell. It was, in the truest sense, a feeding frenzy, and I have been doing this a long time.

So Carlo and Dante did something they did not have to do. They went back to their own personal stock and released more of these wines to us — bottles that are not normally available to anyone, at any price. Enough to pour the second session, and a small amount beyond it.

That small amount beyond it is what this email is. It is going to you, our VIP readers, and nowhere else. Two of these wines are not even listed on our website, because we are not permitted to publish them. The links below work. They will not appear in any search or collection.

Everything Dante released to us, and what is left of each.

Carlo and Dante named this one for their grandmother. It is the wine in the range I reach for when somebody tells me they only drink white Burgundy — the closest thing America makes to Puligny-Montrachet, with the same tension between orchard fruit and stone, and the same refusal to shout.

If the Lady Marjorie is Puligny, this is the closest thing America makes to Corton-Charlemagne: broader, deeper, more mineral, built to be cellared rather than opened tonight. Ninety-nine points from Suckling and ninety-seven from Vinous, and it is not supposed to be sold through retail at all. This listing does not appear anywhere on our site.

This is the cuvée that put RAEN on every list that matters. James Suckling made it the #1 wine in the United States on his Top 100, and Wine Spectator placed it #4 in its Top 100 of the year — both honours awarded to the 2021. What you see here is the newest vintage of the same wine, at 99 points from Suckling again.

A single vineyard from Fort Ross-Seaview, the coldest and most extreme corner of the Sonoma Coast. This wine is sold out at the winery and has never been available at retail. The only reason it is in this email is that Dante brought bottles down from the family library on Saturday.

The other one we are not allowed to publish. Freestone Occidental sits inland of the Fort Ross sites and gives a darker, more brooding Pinot. Ninety-seven points from Vinous, which is the highest Vinous score of anything in this email. Like the Sea Field, this exists here only because the family opened their cellar.

Three miles from the Pacific, a thousand feet up, on one of the coldest growing sites anyone farms in California. This is the wine that earned RAEN a perfect 100 from James Suckling, made in quantities that never reach the open market. Three bottles came back from the family library and three bottles is what we have. One per person, so that three of you get one rather than one of you getting three.

A family opened its cellar for one room.
You are getting what is left.

Six wines between 97 and 100 points. Two that no retail shop in the country is allowed to sell. A perfect score with three bottles behind it. All of it from a producer who makes several hundred cases a year and sells almost all of them to a list that closed years ago. When these are gone there is no reorder — we would have to ask the Mondavi family to open their cellar again, and I am not going to do that twice.

Cheers,

— James Tran

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