"Over the last few years Jamie Kutch has emerged as one of California’s leading proponents of Pinot Noir."
JAMIE GOODE, WINE ANORAK
In pursuit of creating the highest quality balanced wines possible, Kutch strive to find well positioned, cold climate Pinot Noir sites, with special soils. Once the fruit is harvested, it is handled with the utmost care, sorted meticulously and moved only by gravity.
Kutch pursues a minimalist philosophy, trying to provide the purest expression of Pinot Noir from a particular place and time, taking great care not to over-manipulate in the cellar.
This minimal intervention style of wine-making is reflected in the use of indigenous yeast, native malolactic bacteria and élevage in 100% neutral oak barrels (no new).
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All punch-downs are done by foot. Upon completion of fermentation, the wine is gravity flowed into French oak barrels, where they remain unmoved while ageing sur lie.
The wines are not racked until they are ready to bottle, between 11 and 16 months after harvest. Kutch wines are encouraged to express all of the natural greatness of their vineyard origins.
“Kutch wines are the essence of transparency and freshness.” Jancis Robinson MW
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Featured Wines
Falstaff Vineyard Pinot Noir
2021
“I love Jamie Kutch’s wines, as every time I taste them, I think to myself “this is how I would make wine if I could.” Jamie always uses indigenous yeasts, raises the wines solely in used oak and bottles unfined and unfiltered. His 2021 Falstaff Vineyard bottling of pinot noir includes fifty percent whole clusters this year and is excellent, offering up a bright and complex nose of cherries, beetroot, a hint of blood orange, a refined base of soil, a touch of mustard seed, sweet stem tones and a very discreet framing of oak. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and beautifully transparent in personality, with a good core of red fruit, fine soil signature, buried tannins and a long, vibrant and complex finish of impeccable balance.”
94 points, John Gilman, View From The Cellar
McDougall Ranch Pinot Noir
2021
“From a vineyard planted in 1998 at 1010 feet, 3.5 miles from the Pacific. Rocky Greywacke and sandstone soils, and a site above the fog line that is the warmest that Kutch works with. 50% whole bunch. Sweetly aromatic on the nose with ripe cherries and berries, a touch of liqueur-like richness and some green mulchy hints in the background. The palate is sweetly fruited with nice grip under the lush fruit. Really open and inviting, but with some structure under the perfumed, sweet, silky fruit. Such a lovely wine, finishing really bright.”
95 points, Jamie Goode, Wine Anorak
Mindego Ridge Pinot Noir
2021
“From a vineyard owned by David and Stacy Gollnick planted in 2009 at 925 ft, 8 miles from the Pacific, on shale and silty clay loams. This is on a south-facing slope. 50% whole cluster. This has a lovely sweet, ripe cherry and plum fruit core, and is rounded and seductive with elegance and density at the same time. There’s also a lovely wild strawberry character that emerges on day two, and then a bit of raspberry crunch. Such an appealing, forward Pinot Noir with silkiness, elegance and freshness.”
95 points, Jamie Goode, Wine Anorak