A Pinot Noir Romance

I’m in the midst of a wine tasting marathon. I’ve gone from the elegant, aromatic red Burgundies of Domaine Dujac to the weightier, more fruit-driven Pinot Noir from Sonoma County. Next up: A flight of Barolo from legendary estate Giacomo Conterno. More details will come on all these wines later, but one of the most fun parts of my day was learning that winemaker Jamie Kutch proposed to his wife, Kristen, in 2005, during their first harvest, after eight years of dating. He set the ring on the sorting table and sent it down her way. Luckily, she found it and the rest is history. Actually, the young couple is just at the beginning of something exciting: The 2007 Kutch Pinot Noirs are exceptionally balanced, pure, fresh wines with relatively low levels of alcohol (below 13.5%). Perhaps it’s because Jamie honed his palate in New York City with some of the East Coast’s most vocal wine geeks who champion finesse over power (including Lyle Fass of RockssandFruit fame and a former coworker of mine). Jamie makes a very small amount of wine but is hoping to eventually amp up his production to 2000 cases. I encourage any Pinot lover to get in on these wines now--before they're even more impossible to get.