Beau Marchais Soberanes Vineyard Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands 2019
The wine world lost a legend recently with the passing of Philippe Cambie. Today we honor his passion and legacy with one of the last wine projects his deft hand was involved with: The wines of Beau Marchais.
Philippe was the Grenache whisperer and was known as the master of the region’s favored varietal. He produced 15 wines that earned a perfect 100 points from Robert Parker, consulting on a vast array of vintages (for somewhere in the vicinity of 80+ wineries) most focused in his home base of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. In 1994, Adam Lee founded Siduri Wines, and 25 years later he has attained a cult-like following and a reputation as one of California’s top winemakers. His pursuit of Pinot Noir perfection has led to long-standing relationships with top growers in premier appellations along the West Coast.
In a zoom tasting held back in late 2020, the Lee-Cambie collaboration genesis, as Adam described it, was that during their trip to Chateauneuf, “we went to enough places that called grenache ‘the pinot noir of Chateauneuf de Pape.’ I began thinking, could we make California pinot noir in the style of Chateauneuf grenache?” Adam brought the idea to Cambie, and the two agreed that Adam would use his incredible fruit sourcing connections to secure choice California grapes, and Cambie would instruct Adam on how to make the wine. They would do the blending together in-person.
And why Beau Marchais? The project is named after a man named Pierre Beaumarchais, a French playwright, inventor, musician, and spy who helped with the foreign financing of the American Revolution by creating a company that smuggled money from the French and Spanish governments across the Pacific and into the Colonies. “We thought it was a great parallel to Philippe helping to make pinot in America. Also, it means ‘the beautiful walk’ in French.”
Philippe’s Tasting Notes: This wine has a Pyrenean cherry color with brilliant velvet tents. The nose is very elegant, or we discover notes of bitter orange marmalade combined with wild blackberry jelly. It develops an unctuous mouth where we discover aromas of fresh black plum figs combined with chocolate and coffee beans. The aromas are supported by a spice weft where we find notes of cumin oregano thyme and it also has great complexity a great length, a wine cut by aging.
Today we are not only offering this wine at a terrific price (compare to $95 from the winery), all orders of 6 bottles or more will receive a 10% discount that will be automatically applied at checkout. Purchasers will also have first dibs at the stunning and very highly rated 2020 wines arriving this spring.