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Robert Parker Wine Advocate
2016 Sine Qua Non Cumulus Vineyard 'Next of Kyn', Central Coast, USA
Our wines were born of pure passion and a wishful dream – to make something that is so distinctive and so delicious as to make it indispensable to wine lovers the world over. Clearly a rather lofty, even unrealistic notion, but one we decided to pursue anyway. And so, with the 1994 vintage started Sine Qua Non, made a whopping four and a half barrels of Syrah that we called “Queen of Spades.”
That first wine was a much greater hit than we could have ever imagined and it literally changed our life. What started as a hobby, more or less on a whim, has become not only our full-time occupation, but indeed our life. It is now a part of just about everything we do.
These first four and a half barrels have grown into four different vineyard sites (see our Vineyards section please), a good number of wonderfully dedicated and hardworking employees, a new winery building and a simply amazing number of loyal wine lovers the world over. In fact, there are so very many lovely folks interested in our wines that we don’t have enough to go around and instead had to create something as annoying as a waiting list.
We are humbled by all the positive feedback we continuously receive by people like you as well as critics and journalists from all corners of the earth. We take that as our mandate to forever strive to get better, to never compromise and to stay true to ourselves and by extension to all those who have supported us and believed in us since those first 100+ cases of wine left our cellar…now so many years ago.
Although at heart we are a Rhone (Ranger) house where Syrah and Grenache play top fiddle… supported by Mourvedre, Roussanne and Viognier, we have an aversion to labels and dogmas or mindless ritual that are sometimes called tradition. And so, we also grow non-Rhone-origin grapes such as Petit Manseng, Touriga Nacional, Graciano and Petite Sirah. Varieties we believe can work well on a Rhone canvas.