Joe Wagner grew up with Caymus as his classroom. His father, Chuck, founded the estate with Joe's grandparents, Charlie and Lorna Belle Glos Wagner, in 1972. By the time Joe began making his own wines, the family had helped define Napa Valley Cabernet.

In 2001, he carried that legacy toward the coast, founding Belle Glos and naming it for his grandmother. A fifth-generation winemaker, working in a different grape, with a family name to live up to.

In 2006, while still working at Caymus, Joe developed Meiomi, the Pinot Noir that became a national phenomenon. He established Copper Cane Wine & Provisions in 2014, and a year later sold Meiomi to Constellation Brands in a $315 million cash deal.

The agreement was announced on July 1, 2015, and it closed that August. Constellation acquired the brand and its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay inventories. No vineyards were included, and no winery. Copper Cane was already established. The sale gave Joe the means to pursue his ambition of owning more California vineyard land.

That brings us to Glasir Holt, on the western edge of the Sta. Rita Hills, where the Pacific keeps the days cool and the nights cooler. Joe originally intended to plant Pinot Noir, but a small pocket of chalky, calcareous soil caught his attention. He planted Chardonnay there instead. The resulting wine had enough character to earn its own vineyard designation, and it became the first white wine in the Belle Glos portfolio.

The color comes up a clear gold. Ripe pear and crème brûlée, white peach, a little orange blossom, then Meyer lemon, nectarine, and a flicker of butterscotch, with the coast keeping the acidity honest.

The family history gets your attention. This particular stretch of coastal ground gives you a reason to pour the wine. Once you know that ground, what else would you open?

At $30, Belle Glos Glasir Holt deserves a place at your table.

Tasting Panel put a 95 on this 2023 in January 2025, and that is the number that belongs with the bottle in your hand.

A year and a half earlier, the same magazine put Joe on the cover under the line Belle of the Bold, a portrait of the man and the company rather than a score for this Chardonnay.

What the winery tastes in the glass is ripe pear and crème brûlée, white peach, a little orange blossom, then Meyer lemon, nectarine, and a flicker of butterscotch, with the coast keeping the acidity honest.

The color comes up a clear gold, already promising dessert and citrus in the same breath. The bottle in the photograph is Belle Glos Chardonnay from the Glasir Holt line, and the nose opens with ripe pear, crème brûlée, and white peach, then a whisper of orange blossom that arrives late, the way perfume does when someone walks past.

Meyer lemon and nectarine take the middle, butterscotch glances off the new oak, and the finish stays mineral instead of heavy. The 2023 is $30. Twelve bottles ship free in the lower 48. Hawaii and Alaska are quoted on their own.

The woman on the label is Lorna Belle Glos Wagner. Joe put her name on the winery, and this bottle still carries it.

Glasir Holt leaves the cellar in gold foil. The red wax in the photographs belongs to the Pinot.

Fifth generation, and a different grape. The name still has to earn the glass.

Quilt is the Napa Cabernet from the same company, and you can pick it out: the dark bottles on the right of this bar are Quilt. Las Alturas, in a frame below, is a Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot from Monterey County, a cousin with its own dirt, not this Chardonnay. The red wax is how that Pinot gets finished. The marble bar and the terrace are simply the rooms where you would want the glass.

Then there is the frame with William H. Macy. Joe is holding a Belle Glos bottle. Macy is holding a rye that reads Wood Creek. Two different businesses, and one very good photograph.