Top Burgundy & Champagne Winemakers Team Up in California
 
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When one of the preeminent names in Burgundy, Étienne de Montille of Domaine de Montille, sought out land on the West Coast of America to craft Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with a Burgundian sensibility, it was only natural that he focused on the Santa Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County. (It’s a region that seems to pull at French hearts, as it did with the late Philippe Cambie and his joint project with Adam Lee of Siduri, named Beau Marchais.)
 
And draw more Frenchmen, it did. Étienne shared the news with his friend Rodolphe Péters of Champagne’s top-class grower estate, Pierre Péters, who quickly signed on and became the sparkling wine consultant for the project.

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Fred Prinz originally started Weingut Prinz as a “garagiste” or hobbiest winemaker operation in 1991. The critics quickly became enamored, and an invitation to join the legendary VDP consortium followed in 2005. Their estate vineyards are farmed organically, with a house style that aims for “minerality, elegance, finesse and ageing ability” that expresses terroir.
 
With high-elevation holdings in the Rheingau, the winery produces a full range of Riesling’s including the ultra-rare Eiswein. Eiswein is among the hardest wines to make on the entire planet, and is becoming rarer as climate change advances. This is on account of the time the Riesling grapes must spend on the vine as decreed by German law. There’s an endless list of things that could go wrong for the selected clusters during this time.

Both Renée Saint-Amour and Grant Coulter were raised to appreciate Oregon wines, despite hailing from out of state. Their mutual interest and love of adventure brought them to the Valley. Grant worked with Hamacher before joining Beaux Freres and eventually becoming their winemaker under Mike Etzel’s tutelage. Today, Grant is the winemaker at Flâneur, an incredible estate that releases beautiful and utterly delicious wines similarly focused on sustainability.
 
Together, this wife-and-husband team launched Hundred Suns as a boutique winery and eventually scrapped together enough cash to purchase Breaker Vineyard, a fifty-year-old site in the Eola-Amity Hills and now home to them, their kids, and their winery. They do everything by hand, from crafting their wines, distributing in town, and even their stunning label-design.

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If you’re not familiar with Ca’ del Baio, know that they are a traditionally-styled, family-owned Barbaresco estate in Treiso that’s been crafting wine for over 150 years. Their vineyards are farmed sustainably with biodiversity in mind and no synthetic fertilizers or herbicides. In the winery, they natural yeast fermentation and minimal sulfur for a purer expression of the fruit.
 
The wines undergo a long and slow maceration before aging in neutral Slavonian oak boti, resulting in fresh and aromatic wines with a rich complexity and glorious tannic structure.
 
The Autinbej is a blend of the sunniest parcels in the crus of Treiso, Marcarini, and Ferrerre. It’s typically bold and intense with a ripe tannic profile. The Asili cru bottling includes the estate’s oldest vines.

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The Coutier family has called the Grand Cru Champagne village of Ambonnay home for over four hundred years. Their Champagnes display the power and richness of the village—and at prices so low it might make you second guess their quality. But that would be a mistake: the wines of R.H. Coutier are perpetually some of the most loved and admired Champagnes in the shop. The volume we can offer is a bold statement for a producer that only releases around 5,000 cases total each vintage. We sell dozens of cases of their “Tradition,” Blanc de Blancs, and even vintage bottlings every year. And plenty makes it to our personal cellars.
 
What makes this particular Champagne so admired? Aside from the affordability and history, the farming and style contribute to their fame chez Vinopolis.