Clos Pepe

Clos Pepe is a family-owned vineyard and winery set in the heart of the Santa Rita Hills of Santa Barbara County, California. Of the 29 acres planted in vines, 25 acres are planted in Pinot Noir, and 4 acres in Chardonnay. Pinot Noir is our passion. We make about 800 cases of Estate Pinot Noir each year, and about 100 cases of Chablis-style Chardonnay that is aged without the use of any new oak.

Clos Pepe Estate uses 100% Clos Pepe grapes in all of our wines. We do not source fruit from any other vineyards. We believe that sustainably-farmed Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes grown at extraordinarily low yields (under two tons per acre, or around 10 hectoliters/hectare) make wines with excellent concentration, complexity, and elegance.

We are non-interventionist winemakers. The real work of winemaking occurs in the vineyard. We have found that growing the grapes and harvesting them at perfect ripeness levels makes winemaking a pleasure. Most technical aspects of winemaking occur when a winemaker has to 'fix' a problem with the fruit: not enough acid, not enough sugar, etc. We believe that micro-managing the vineyard and picking the fruit at optimal ripeness makes our work in the cellar easy. Freshly picked, cool bins of fruit are delivered to the winery in the morning. Pinot Noir is crushed cold into small open- top fermenters and allowed to 'cold soak' for 2-3 days. Once the native yeasts begin to warm the grape/juice combination (called 'must'), we inoculate with RC-212 yeast. We use between 25% to 50% new French oak, changing the percentage of 'new' oak depending on the intensity and yield of any vintage's crop.

Chardonnay is pressed cold and fresh, whole-clusters dumped into the press, directly into neutral French oak or small stainless-steel barrels. We add CY-3079 yeast to the juice and allow the fermentation to occur in barrel. We never use any new (or even slightly used) French oak for our Chardonnay, preferring the austere, flinty style of Chardonnay characterized by the fine wines of Chablis, France. Wines are allowed to mature in barrels for 11 to 19 months, and then bottled with minimal fining and filtration. When possible, we bottle our wines without filtering them.

To us, wine is an expression of the vintage and the place where it was grown. We do everything we can to allow the 'somewhereness' of the wines to be purely expressed. We do not use chemical means to influence the wines. We want each vintage to be a special expression of the wind, the fog, the sunshine and the soil that define Clos Pepe Estate.