The Sonoma Mountain = 100% McCrea Single-Vineyard ($200) Yet $89.97

"The complexity here is just unreal. If there is a hidden gem in the Kistler lineup, this is it!"

Dear Artisans,

We have been sold out of this since May. Not low — out, with a waiting list I have been apologising to for three months. Last week we squeezed our partners hard enough to shake loose twenty-four bottles. That is the final drop, and I'll explain exactly what it is, because how would you know?

It says Sonoma Mountain. It is all the McCrea Single-Vineyard.

Kistler has farmed the McCrea vineyard since the 1980s — a hillside bench at around eight hundred feet, planted to the California Heritage selection Steve Kistler chose over thirty years of work, yielding two and a half to three tons an acre. The vineyard is not one thing. Part of it sits on pale, silica-driven ash soils. The rest sits on red volcanic ground with more organic matter, which gives broader shoulders and more fruit.

Kistler splits the vineyard in two. The white-soil parcels go into the McCrea Vineyard bottling. The red volcanic parcels go into this one, which they label Sonoma Mountain. Same farming, same clone, same hands, same hill. Different rocks.

Antonio Galloni has now reviewed the red-soil wine two vintages running and said the quiet part out loud both times. On the 2024: “really a single-vineyard wine, all from some of the more generous blocks within McCrea... The complexity here is just unreal. If there is a hidden gem in the Kistler lineup, this is it!” Ninety-four points.

On the 2023 he was even more explicit: the wine comes from the McCrea parcels with reddish soils, and “it approaches the quality of the vineyard-designates.” Ninety-three points. Two vintages, two notes, the same verdict: this is designate-grade wine wearing an appellation label.

Which is where it gets interesting, because the designate it approaches is a two-hundred-dollar bottle and you cannot buy it.

Same hill. Same clone. Same hands.
A hundred and ten dollars apart.

McCrea Vineyard price is the current US market for the designate and is not our price. Scores as published by each critic for the 2024 vintage.

Both wines come out of McCrea. The vineyard-designate takes the white ash blocks and lands at ninety-eight from JamesSuckling.com, ninety-six from The Wine Independent, ninety-six from Jeb Dunnuck and ninety-five from Vinous. It sells for around two hundred dollars when it surfaces at all, — which is rarely.

This one takes the red volcanic blocks off the same hill, farmed by the same people, and Galloni scored it ninety-four while calling it the hidden gem of the entire Kistler range. Eighty-nine ninety-seven. You are paying for the soil colour, not the winemaking.

Dried orchard fruit, ash, gravel, incense, dried citrus peel, sage and white pepper. That is Galloni on the 2024, and it is a strange, mineral, savoury list for a California Chardonnay — which is exactly what the red volcanic ground at eight hundred feet does to this clone. The wine is grounded and focused at its core and then lifts into something ethereal on top.

The 2023 he found seductive on a different axis — dried flowers, mint, chamomile, herbs, citrus peel and an earthy undertow. Back-to-back, the same reviewer, the same conclusion. Read both in full.

24 Bottles · Final Drop · Limit 12

The whole house delivered
this year.

For context on the year: every 2024 Kistler single-vineyard bottling reviewed so far has landed between 94 and 100 points across Vinous, JamesSuckling.com, Jeb Dunnuck and The Wine Independent, with most clustered at 96 to 98. Laguna Ridge took a hundred from Jim Gordon.

Those are other wines at other prices and I am not pretending otherwise. The point is simply that 2024 is a year where the whole house delivered, and this bottle comes off the same estate, the same heritage selection and the same cellar as all of them.

Twenty-four bottles of a wine
that has been gone since May.

Twenty-four bottles. We have been out since May and there is no second drop behind this one. Kistler releases twice a year, in August and January — and the allocation list has a queue.

A hundred and ten dollars is what this trades at in most places. We are at eighty-nine ninety-seven, limit twelve per customer. If you have ever wanted to know what the fuss over Kistler is about without paying two hundred dollars to find out, this is the bottle Galloni has now twice told you to buy.

Cheers,

— James Tran

24 Bottles · $89.97 · Limit 12 Per Customer

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