For a full description and narrative of our winemaking, click here!

• 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, mostly from Allier, Bertranges, and Troncais forests.  We change 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.

The Winemaking Story

by Wes Hagen, Vineyard Manager/Winemaker, Clos Pepe Vineyards

Back in 1996 when we planted the Chardonnay vineyard I made a promise to myself.  I was itching to make wine professionally, I was receiving top-notch tutelage as an intern at Babcock Vineyards and Winery, and I was ready to take on the wine world.  The best piece of advice I received that year was from Jeff Newton of Coastal Vineyard Care, who helped us plan and plant our Chardonnay vineyard.

'Most winemakers are lost in the vineyard,' Jeff had told me.  'They couldn't farm their way out of a wet sack.'

I remember him telling me this as we walked through the infant Dijon 76 vineyard, young vines struggling to climb the trellis wires for the first time.

'You're very lucky here Wes,' Jeff confided.  'I'd learn to farm for five years before I tried to make my own commercial wine.'

Those words echoed in my head.  Five years.  Five seasons.  A long time to wait.

Jeff wasn't the first or last local wine personality to offer advice.  During one of my first trips to the Hitching Post in Buellton I met Chris Whitcraft who makes some excellent small-production Pinot Noir.  This was pre-Babcock and pre-Jeff's advice.  Steve Pepe introduced me to him.

'Chris, this is Wes Hagen.  He's wants to be a winemaker.'

Chris shook my hand and smiled.  'You know there's drugs that can prevent that.'

The next episode also took place at the Hitching Post, the hub of the Santa Ynez Wine Drinking firmament.  Bryan Babcock was eating with Walt and Mona, his folks, and noticed we were sitting at the next table.  The Vigneron, L'agent and I were discussing whether I might benefit from taking a few years to attend Davis or Fresno State, and we decided to get Bryan's take on the two campuses.

Fresno?  Davis?' Bryan asked.  'You'll get out and still need to know how to work in a winery.  Might as well just come over and work for me.'  So I did.

Those are the memories that come racing back when I try to remember the process of becoming a winemaker.  It started with Steve Pepe and Frank Guadagnini, both of Long Beach home winemaker fame, and ended with me managing Clos Pepe for five years and (finally)starting our own label with wines from the 2000 vintage.

Five years at Clos Pepe has taught me the obvious lesson:  that great wine is farmed, not made.  The true winemakers are the viticulturists.  The potential quality of any wine is dictated by the condition of the fruit as it arrives at the crush platform.  It is the enologist's job to preserve the quality of the fruit in wine form, and to fix any problems that might arise during fermentation and barrel aging.  Knowing that I would be making my own legal, bonded wines in the 2000 vintage helped me really focus in the vineyard and grow some special wine.  This was the first year for harvesting a commercial crop of Pinot Noir as well, and my great passion for the varietal made my hard work and long hours worth while.

So enough about me, how about the wines?

Pinot Noir:  Clos Pepe will be offering 200 cases of Vintage 2000 Pinot Noir to an allocation list.  The allocation list has been filling up quickly since the word got out (it is now full and closed), and is up to nearly a hundred members already.  I will cap the allocation list at 200 with a waiting list, and those members will get two months to buy as much wine as they wish before the remaining cases (if any) are offered for public sale.  A hundred and fifty cases will be a Pinot Noir made in the New World style-crushed and destemmed before allowing two to three days of 'cold soak' to begin extracting color pigments and phenolic compounds into the juice before primary fermentation.  These wines received special attention in the cellar, which is the facility of Kahn and Avelina Wines in Lompoc.  They were punched down by hand, mixing the skins and the juice up to five times a day, every few hours.  The wines spent between ten and fourteen days on the skins, began fermenting with indigenous yeasts and were finished with a Burgundian isolate called RC 212, and were pressed slightly sweet into barrel to protect delicate fruit flavors.  They finished fermenting in barrel and are tasting wonderful, earthy and complex.  Fifty cases of Pinot Noir (roughly a ton of fruit) were fermented in a totally different style.  These bins were fermented 'whole-cluster' style, which is much more common in Burgundy.  The grapes were stomped, stems and all, in small bins for almost an hour followng morning harvest, and the color extracted from this ancient practice was amazing.  The wines were stomped and punched down daily, and they stayed on their skins for sixteen days.  Fermentation was completed by indigenous (native) yeasts.  This wine made itself in a strictly Burgundian fashion.  It's still hard as nails, tannic and unevolved.  In barrel it's quite a monster, not a shy wine.  The crushed and destemmed lots are more elegant and fruity, the whole-cluster wines are much more aggressive.  I suggest the whole-cluster wine will need three to five years in the cellar after bottling, and the other seven barrels will produce a softer more elegant wine more appropriate for drinking in its youth.  The acidity in both wines guarantees that either will be able to go at least five years properly cellared, and I see no reason why these wines won't be able to taste complex, fruity and beautiful far into the next decade.  For allocation write to weshagen@thegrid.net (or call 805-735-2196 if computers frighten you) as long as you live in a State where I can ship you wine.  If you live in a 'gulag' state that thinks distributor's contributions are more important that your right to interstate commerce and the survival of family farms, please write or call your local representative and voice your outrage.

Chardonnay: Ahhhh, Chardonnay.  The most maligned white winegrape on the planet.  Just the sound of the word conjures up images buttery, uninteresting flab that was grown in a region more appropriate for Thompson's Seedless.  Doesn't anyone respect the most noble white winegrape any more?  Well, I try.  The 2000 Vintage was good to Chardonnay.  The wines were harvested at wonderful ripeness and have fermented nice and clean in the cellar.  This year I have limited my Chardonnay production to three barrels, one of which has already been sold to my favorite local sushi joint in Lompoc called Oki.  Oki Chardonnay, get it?  Ironically, I am fermenting and aging my Chardonnay in 55 gallon stainless steel casks this season.  There will be no oak added to this wine at all, which should make a singular wine of great depth, structure, intensity of fruit and wonderful minerality.  The wines in stainless are smelling gorgeous through and after fermentation.  Pineapple, green apple, mango, chalky mineral notes and grapefruit references seem to dominate the wine at its current stage of development.  I have inoculated the casks with malolactic starter, and plan to take this wine through 100% ML fermentation to give it a rich, nutty flavor that will compliment its excellent acidity and mineral flavors.  And just for kicks and evaluation purposes, I have also barreled down 60 gallons of Chardonnay in brand new Slovanian oak to see what I'm missing by doing my Chardonnay in a Chablis, non-oaked style.  I am constantly trying to prove myself wrong in this business, and decided I should not spurn oak until I try it.  A very small allotment (a few bottles) of the new-oak wine will also be available to the allocation list.  There is only one allocation list for both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, so joining the list entitles you to a bit of both wines.