Yes!  Another new one to sign up for.  Pinot and Chard.

I have not tasted these wines but I have heard some good rumors.  I want to check them out before saying anything here.

If anyone knows something please tell us.

In the mean-time...  for goodness sake...  sign up for the mailing list!  Tell 'em David N. recommended you.

Benovia Winery Web Site

Benovia Winery
3339 Hartman Road
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

I bought from their previous release and did some barrel tasting at the winery. I liked their zin, Mike Sullivan (from Hartford) is the winemaker and they own Cohn Vineyard kind of influenced my interest. I thought their Cohn pinot barrel sample I had in the Spring was much more restrained (not necessarily a bad thing) than anything KB ever did with the fruit. I was not too impressed with the chard.

I signed up a bit ago when I heard KB was no longer getting the Cohn fruit and these folks were going to keep it instead... Funny timing as I just received their Holiday email...

Funny, but I heard they wanted to change the vineyard name from Cohn to something else a couple of years back, but changed their minds when the first KB scores hit WS.  That's when they decided to keep the fruit for themselves.

I was sent a mailer last year, but didn't buy because of not knowing anything about the wine.  I'm guessing somebody gave them my info.....the name was a complete mystery to me.

Chris

I signed up for this a year or so ago based on Mike Sullivan becoming the winemaker. Didn’t bite on the Zin & Rose offering, but will likely try the Pinot.

Growers are deceiving themselves if they think that they can "automatically" make perfect wines from perfect fruit. It's 50% grapes and 50% winemaker (the proportions are arguable), and if they have great grapes but a mediocre winemaker that is an average wine in my book.

I've enjoyed pretty much everything that Mike made at Hartford, so I signed up for this one. Thanks for the "heads up" David!

I also tasted some barrel samples at the winery.  We tasted the '05 zin and it was terrific - not over the top at all, really good stuff. Also barrel sampled their 4 '06 pinots including the Cohn SVD.  Each pinot was quite different from one another, and I found them to be less concentrated and more subtle and restrained compared to many other Sonoma pinots I tasted on my trip (KB, Siduri, Auteur, Kutch).