Diego Valdez welcomes you his first-ever Wine of the Week, presented in partnership with The Wine Spies! Each week, Diego will bring you one exclusive and carefully selected wine - at the best possible prices. Wines will be available for one week - or until sold out, so please be sure to reserve yours soon.

Today’s wine steal is the delicious, elegant and award-winning Wild Horse Winery and Vineyards 2013 “Cheval Sauvage” Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir. Wild Horse’s Cheval Sauvage is the winery’s flagship Pinot Noir. It just doesn’t get any better than this balanced beauty of a wine.

About the wine:

This Pinot-Noir has medium-light density with a garnet coloration that is very consistent from edge to edge. The nose is aromatic with a bouquet of cherry, dried cranberry, rich new leather, desiccated violets and holiday spices. The palate is full of barrel tannin flavor of vanilla, butterscotch, and gingerbread spice, with fruit components of cherry compote and fig. Cheval Sauvage is a well-balanced Pinot that brings the peppy acidity into harmony with soft glycerin content. Simply smooth from start to finish. This would stand up well to a nuanced and robust dish such as chicken cacciatore.

Wild Horse has been making wine since the early 80’s. Their reputation for quality - and high-scoring wines - is unrivaled in Santa Barbara County’s Santa Maria Valley.

Santa Barbara County’s Pinot Noir may have become famous by the movie Sideways, but the tradition of wine growing and winemaking dates back to the Spanish missionaries but after prohibition, many of the vines disappeared. In the early 1970s vines began to reappear and in just a few years, however unlikely, the region began to develop a reputation for producing exceptional Burgundian varietals challenging Oregon and New Zealand in the production of exceptional Pinot Noir.

The Santa Maria Valley and Santa Ynez Valley where the fruit for this wine was sourced have maritime climates influenced and tempered by the Pacific Ocean and soils of sand and clay loam which suits Pinot Noir exceptionally well.

Note: At today’s very special price, this wine will likely sell out early.

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Here’s what the wine press has to say:

Mulberry, cherry, iron, raw beef and roasted pork aromas make for a gamy entry to this bottling, which also shows bay leaf and sage on the nose. Those sagebrush qualities are strong on the palate, which is reminiscent of an Asian-spiced meat dish, with rhubarb and pomegranate lending freshness.

93 Points! - Wine Enthusiast