Kistler Pinot Noir Russian River Valley, 750ml, Sonoma, USA

In 1978 Kistler was founded on the notion that compelling wines of site should be made in California.
Steve Kistler and Mark Bixler believed that remarkable and charactered Chardonnays of site could in fact be grown and produced in California. It was a notion ahead of its time. For the last forty years we’ve been pursuing that notion without compromise. Bill Price, longtime owner of Durell Vineyards purchased an interest in Kistler Vineyards from Steve in 2008. Jason Kesner joined Steve in the cellar in 2008 in order to begin to lay the groundwork for the next forty years. Steve retired from Kistler Vineyards at the end of 2017.
Pinot Noir Wines
Kistler is a proudly Californian effort. Our goal for nearly fifty years has been to lessen our imprint on every vineyard we work with and the wines that result. 


Old world reverence applied to new world sites.
This is a profoundly difficult process, as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the varietals most easily marked by heavy-handed farming and the hand of the maker.
Two heritage clones inform all of our Pinot Noir Vineyards. We’ve been propagating these two selections for the last twenty-five years. Our approach to Pinot Noir is very similar to Chardonnay but we have two clones. For the last 25 years we’ve been working on selecting which of the two we preferred and we finally came to the conclusion that the answer was both. We’ve been planting our newer Pinot Noir Vineyards with a field mix of the two selections of late, giving deference to neither and laying the groundwork for our next generation of Pinot Noirs to be as transparent to site, and their relativity to each other, as are our Chardonnays. Both selections are marked by very low yields, small berries, great concentration and color in the fruit and a propensity to hold their natural acids during ripening.