Piedrasassi Santa Maria Valley Syrah Bien Nacido Vineyard

Since we began making the Piedrasassi wines in 2003, our ideas about wine have expanded and evolved. We enjoy drinking wines from lots of different regions--Burgundy, the Northern Rhône, Beaujolais, the Jura, and Piedmont, to name a few--so it is difficult to pin us down to a specific style we try to emulate. We are blown away by the tradition and sense of place of wines like Albert Dervieux's lyrical La Viallière from Côte-Rôtie, and are amazed at the stylized concentration and texture of Stanko Radikon's avant-garde Ribolla Gialla from Friuli. And we are continually inspired by the diversity of grapes and wines cultivated in the wide open, relatively uncharted territory that is the California wine industry.

The way these widespread tastes express themselves in the winery is in our different bottlings of our flagship varietal, Syrah, and a handful of small offerings of other varietals. For the Syrah, we focus on cooler climate vineyards, using native yeasts, low sulfur, and stem inclusion at fermentation to give transparency to the wines and to develop wines that have exuberant, lively aromatics. For the green label Sauvignon Blanc, we use extended skin contact for a mouthfeel unusual in a white wine. And the whole-cluster, closed-tank fermentation of the carbonic Sangiovese gives the wine a great freshness and energy that we absolutely love.

The common thread among all the wines we love and admire is that there are both a mind and a place behind them. Wine, just like food, or music, or art, should have a certain kind of authenticity--it should come from someone and somewhere. This idea is what informs the work that we do. We try to make honest wines that we believe in. We hope you like them.