After a decade spent developing it, I’m frequently asked to define the Donum Pinot Noir style. First, we strive to obtain purity of expression of both site and clone or selection. We want a wine defined by its fruit, not by what is done to it in the cellar.

People have called our wines “elegant.” At first, I almost took offense, assuming that was a polite way of saying they lacked intensity. But I realized that people really meant “balanced,” a wine with an even interplay of fruit, tannin, acid and oak, a seamless wine in which all the holes are filled, but not overfilled.

Many of our descriptors sound like yin and yang: intense but graceful, power with delicacy, concentrated yet balanced. Always we look for prettiness. We don’t want a wine that is tiring, heavy, overripe, over-extracted or clumsy. That’s not the nature of Pinot Noir, not even of good Syrah. We want a wine that is well-integrated, complex but understated, a wine with a presence that engages you without grabbing you, a wine that endures, ages, has staying power and subtlety, a wine that always leaves you wanting more.

What about terroir? How do you drive it? Well, first you are handed the keys to the brand new BMW. Then what? That’s the thrill of it.

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