Pisoni Vineyards, Santa Lucia Highlands, California
The vineyard at Pisoni Vineyards, Santa Lucia Highlands, California. Copyright Campbell Mattinson.
At no point do we go into the winery. We pass the vineyard, but only because it’s between us and the opened bottles of wine. We’ve trekked up a dry, rock-strewn road to reach Pisoni – it’s one of those secret, tucked-away estates with a view of everyone and everything else – and once there we’ve surveyed the landscape and then walked our way through a large, sprawling, dusty hillside of flowering trees, plants and shrubs. This hillside is known as Pisoni’s “insect garden”. It was meticulously researched so that, at any and all times of the year, something is flowering. This garden took thousands of plantings to create, and is complemented by bees and bee-hives, the latter of which produce the most astonishing of honey, which we ate with cheese. I’m sure that the folks at Pisoni told us of their wine philosophy as we sipped on their excellent Pico Blanco but in all honesty, I was too busy taking in what I was being shown. Pisoni is, as a visitor, the ultimate show-don’t-tell landscape. It’s not about the making. It’s not about the talking. It’s about the great yawning sun-swept land on which the Pisoni folk happen to grow fruit in the most caring of ways, from which they squeeze wine. When we finally do walk through the tunnel and into the cool dark of the estate’s tasting cellar, the set of chardonnays and more particularly the pinot noirs are, in their varietal context, the most powerful wines I experience on this trip. These are wines with an American power. One of the more epic of the wines tasted here inspired me to write the words “there's a storm of berried fruit flavour raging beneath the sheen”. The estate is one thing but tasting these Pisoni Vineyards wines was a jaw-drop moment. The power of the land and its abundant life had translated straight into an abundant power in the glass. By the time I left Pisoni my head was buzzing louder than the estate’s bees. I learned on this trip that Pisoni is a vineyard built on sustainable practices and philosophies. More than that though, I learnt that Pisoni Vineyards is a world on its own small patch and that its wines are a match for anything.
Reviews of the wines I tasted in the Pisoni cellar.
One small slice of the view from the top of Pisoni Vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands.
Oft-photographed Jeep at the entrance/exit to the tasting cellars at Pisoni Vineyards.
Tasting table/cellar at Pisoni Vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands, California.
