Antica Terra 'Obelin' Pinot Noir

When we sat at the blending table with the 2013s, we were faced with a confusing group of barrels that while incredibly delicious by themselves, did not find kinship with anything else on the table. We tried adding them, one at a time, first to the Ceras composite and then when that didn’t work, to the Botanica. Nothing. Each time, we’d go back and taste the barrel by itself and look at each other shaking our heads. They were so beautiful and they had no friends. Each of the barrels was markedly different from one another but each of them was marked with an intensity and a tension that somehow kept them from easing into either of the composites. And so we worked instead with these barrels, separately from the rest, and found that eleven of them combined to make a wine with a depth of expression and an energy that was both remarkable and incredibly lovely. In the eventual moment that we learned, through matching the numbers on the bottles with what was in them, we were surprised and delighted to find that each of the eleven barrels came from Dick Shea’s beautiful vineyard. We had, without trying (or, for that matter, being aware) created our first Shea vineyard designate pinot noir.

Obelin is one of the photo-proteins responsible for bioluminescence, the ability of a living thing to create its own light. The bioluminescent are defined by light, speak in a language of light. This wine, that revealed itself to us through the obscurity of a blind tasting, seemed to demand a name that reflected the same. While not a permanent member of the family, this name will be reserved whenever a wine, like this singular cépage, demands our attention with its luminosity.