The gorgeous 2008 Pinot Noir Clos Pepe (14.3% alcohol) has loads of forest floor notes along with damp earth, clove, allspice, raspberry, and pomegranate. The wine is medium-bodied and displays sweet, silky tannins, but has an overall layered, forceful personality, with zesty acids and medium weight. It should drink nicely for up to a decade. Greg Brewer and Steve Clifton continue to follow a strict philosophy of only using grapes from cool-climate Santa Rita Hills vineyards. Additionally, they have reduced what was a very tiny percentage of new oak to zero, as they prefer the vineyard sites and vintage character to be showcased without any cosmetic makeup. All of these Chardonnays (unlike Greg Brewer’s project, called Diatom) are put through full malolactic fermentation and bottled without filtration. The 2008s are elegant, tightly coiled Chardonnays with full flavor, and seem to have plenty of up-side. Their wines are extremely long-lived by California standards, with their 2000 Chardonnays still remarkably young, and their 2000 Pinot Noirs all seeming to have another decade of aging ability. However, 2000 was not nearly the quality vintage that recent years have been in the Santa Rita Hills. Now luckily, to introduce their philosophy of winemaking and singular style of wines to more consumers, they are producing generic Santa Rita Hills version of both the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This makes sense, since they are not only high-quality wines, but are also larger production items that many consumers will be able to find. These 2008 Pinots had a little new oak, but that will be abolished completely as the winemakers move to old, completely neutral French oak for the maturation process. The one singular characteristic of Brewer Clifton Pinot Noirs is that they continue to use 100% whole clusters/stems. I am not a fan of stems in Pinot Noirs, but Brewer Clifton proves that if done properly, complex, ageworthy Pinots can be produced. Tel. (805) 735-9184; Fax (805) 735-9185