100% Pinot Noir

Food pairings: Poke bowls, grilled pork chops, sushi, roast chicken and kale salad with dried cranberries and pine nuts.

Winemaking: Estate fruit from seventeen Pinot Noir clones is typically fermented about 40% whole-cluster and 60% gently destemmed in small open-top fermenters, with extended skin and stem contact. The wine then ages sur lie in neutral French oak barrels (15+ years old) for many months before bottling.

Vineyards and terroir: All fruit is Melville's own from the Sta. Rita Hills estate outside Lompoc, on sandy loam soils under the AVA's cold Pacific sunshine. The estate plantings include clones 667, 777, 828, Pommard, Calera, Mount Eden, Swan, Merry Edwards, Vosne-Romanée and others, giving the wine its layered sweet-and-savory character.

Family and history: Ron Melville and his sons planted the Lompoc estate in the mid-1990s, years before the Sta. Rita Hills AVA was recognized. Chad Melville, co-founder and head winegrower, has shaped the estate's organic, clone-diverse Pinot program; the Estate Pinot Noir remains the complete picture of Melville's hillside vineyard.

In the pictures: Head winegrower Chad Melville (courtesy of Melville Winery); co-founder Ron Melville among the vines (courtesy of Melville Winery); and Melville estate vineyard rows in the Sta. Rita Hills (courtesy of Melville Winery).