Pilcrow Wines!

Sara and Jonah Beer describe Pilcrow as their love letter to the Napa Valley, and it reads like one written by people who have been paying very close attention for a long time. The two fell in love with the valley over two decades before founding the winery in 2014, drawn not to its modern blockbusters but to its earlier identity: the classically proportioned, site-specific Cabernets made in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s by the likes of Lee Stewart at Chateau Souverain, Nathan Fay, Bob Travers, and Al Brounstein. The name Pilcrow refers to the typographic paragraph symbol, a quiet nod to storytelling and to the idea of writing a fresh chapter. Sara is the primary winemaker, and her approach in the cellar is as stripped back as the philosophy that drives it: early picking for lower alcohol and higher natural acidity, cold soak before fermentation, no extended maceration, restrained new oak, no fining, no filtration. In the vineyards, the ethos is equally minimal: no irrigation, no tilling, no hedging, no thinning, a regenerative approach rooted in the conviction that the less you impose, the more the site can say. Pilcrow sources from a carefully selected group of Napa vineyard sites, including the Pym-Rae Vineyard on Mt. Veeder (formerly owned by Robin Williams) and the Ghost Block Vineyard in Yountville, and the wines have earned serious recognition, with Decanter listing Pilcrow alongside Dalla Valle, Larkmead, and Kapscándy among Napa Valley's top ten producers. For collectors who fell in love with Napa Cabernet before the scores started climbing into the stratosphere, this is exactly the kind of winery worth knowing.