Gold letters, red geraniums

The drive in ends at a dark board with the name in gold letters, set on a stone wall. The bed in front is packed with red geraniums, and a pale silvery bush fills the right side of the frame. A smaller green board on a post by the road carries the Napa Green mark and the Fish Friendly Farming mark.

Proprietor Tatiana Copeland holds the estate. President and winemaker Chris Kajani makes the wine, with a vineyard crew that has long been women. Andre Tchelistcheff was the one who told Copeland to plant the Swan clone on this ground. The name itself plays on bouchon, the French word for a cork.

From here the land looks toward San Francisco Bay, and on a clear day the financial district sits on the far water. Nightly fog off San Pablo Bay, the wind, and the cold nights are what give the Pinot and the Chardonnay their shape. The estate farms the ground as Napa Green, with regenerative, climate-smart work in the rows.

The terrace after the fog

Walk up from the sign and the ground rises to a curved wooden building. At dusk the windows are lit, fire bowls burn on the stone terrace, and the beds in front run red and yellow under a sky streaked with pink. A brick path follows the low stone wall along the garden.

That terrace is where the fog has already done the day's work. It comes off the bay at night, sits on the vines, and leaves in the morning. In 2022 the season stayed in that pattern until a heat that lasted five days at the start of September. The fruit was already ready, so the pick ran short and the cellar filled fast.

What came through was the acidity the estate wants from Carneros, with depth under it. Kajani keeps the Swan Clone apart from the other Pinot on the property. The blocks stay separate, and only the barrels that taste most like this clone are pulled for the bottle.

Night pick, then the press

A gravel walk curves between two tall cypress trees toward the vineyard rows. A closed beige umbrella stands over a black metal table, terracotta pots sit on the lawn, and red blooms line the grass. The rows on the hill are the estate fruit.

The 2022 Pinot was picked by hand at night, so the berries stayed whole. It rested in a cold soak for seven days, then fermented with the yeast that came in on the fruit, in open-top tanks. The wine was drawn off, and the must went into a basket press.

The blocks then aged apart in French oak. The barrels with the clearest Swan Clone voice were the ones set aside, and the wine stayed on its primary lees until bottling. The glass is light on its feet. Strawberry that is just ripe, fresh cherry, and a thread of cinnamon sit on a frame soft enough to feel graceful and firm enough to hold the wine up.

Cherry, then the earth

The estate sheet for this bottle names no plate. The glass is fresh and light, so the first plate is a fish and the second is the mushroom that meets the cinnamon.

Roasted salmon with dill and lemon is the brighter of the two, the citrus against the cherry. Mushroom risotto is the deeper one, the browned slices sitting where the oak and the spice already are.