The 2020 Pinot Noir Running Fence Vineyard Cuvee Catherine is also a transparent ruby and offers good concentration, with incredible citrus of blood orange, elegant spices of clove, and darker berries, including black raspberry. Medium-bodied and driven by tension and a structured feel, it has a great spine of acidity, fine tannins, and a coiled personality at this stage, with dark berries, fresh acidity, and briny saline making an appearance. Allow this another few years and drink 2024-2034. The family estate of Steve Kistler in the Bodega Headlands, Occidental is exclusively devoted to producing coastally influenced Pinot Noir. Kistler was initially drawn to the area after tasting a bottling of Summa Vineyard that expressed a vivid and more cool climate style. Though Occidental was officially founded in 2011, Steve has been planting vineyards and purchasing property in the area since the 1990s and has retained his original cellar team for the past 30 years. His daughter Catherine Kistler has been the assistant winemaker since 2017, and they are members of the West Sonoma Coast Vintners Association. Looking toward the estate's future, they have acquired a new ranchland property two and a half miles from the coast and will begin planting Pinot Noir vines on Goldridge soils next year at this even cooler temperature site. The following wines were tasted at the winery in May. For each of the single-vineyard sites, they hold the wines back an additional year, so this tasting focused on the 2020 vintage (with the exception of the 2021 Pinot Noir Freestone-Occidental).

Despite the season’s wildfires and extreme heat, the 2020 Pinot Noir Running Fence Vineyard Cuvée Catherine is drinking beautifully, though it has tightened since I first tasted it in 2023. “We really were just lucky here,” Steve Kistler says, “with that churn of wind off the ocean to flush things out, and we pick early. We started picking a day before the fires started and had everything in before smoke became part of the conversation.” Medium ruby in color, it requires plenty of air to segue from initial wafts of graphite to pomegranate, blackberry, aniseed and Earl Grey tea leaves on the nose. The light-bodied palate offers ethereal flavors framed by powdery tannins and tangy acidity, and it has a long, juicy finish.