We walked into the half empty boardroom and quietly sunk into a pair of overstuffed chairs, right as five men were in the middle of a conversation. Distracted, they looked up at us curious to know what we were doing there, but kept up their conversation on pinot noir grapes.

We looked around and noticed 15 uncorked wine bottles with makeshift labels stained with red wine; numbers and letters were scrawled across the white labels denoting…what? As the conversation progressed between Brad Lewis, Director of Wine Sales, Atanas Nechkov, Wine Supervisor and three men we hadn’t met yet, we quickly realized the numbers and letters combined to signify a certain clone of pinot noir from Laetitia Vineyards.

The other men at the table, we learned, were Eric Hickey, President and Winemaker at Laetitia Vineyard & Winery, Frank Bacon, State Wine Manager at Premier Beverage, and Brad Kinder, Broker for Kind Wines. The group in the board room was busy sipping and swirling different pinot noir clones before combining them into a blend to be used as Laetitia’s 2012 Harvest Moon Ranch Pinot Noir, a wine blended exclusively for ABC Fine Wine & Spirits every year.

Pouring clone X2-2, 777, Eric Hickey explained, “We basically look at this as a beauty contest.” Before his trip to Florida, Eric picked out his top 15 pinot noir clones from his 75 clones in various plots at Laetitia. These are the clones that normally go into Laetitia’s reserve wines, selling for around $50/bottle. Eric’s beauty contest statement couldn’t have been better timed either—the X2-2, 777 had an elegant flavor. Atanas described it as “really pretty,” and the rest of us just wanted to taste it again.

Eric Hickey blending the Pinot Noir juices

It took this group of wine experts only two tries to nail down the perfect pinot. If you'd like to view a video of Eric blending the juices, check it out here. The 2012 Harvest Moon Ranch Pinot Noir is a blend of six different clones and will be available in the spring of 2014—this way it has more time to age before it gets to you. And we can't wait for it to get to us.

Cheers,

Meghan and Hannah