Only the juice that runs free.

Kistler's Sonoma Coast Pinot is picked at night, from more than one coastal site, and it is built around a decision most cellars will not make. The fruit is destemmed. It ferments as whole berries, on native yeast, in open-top tanks. Then the cellar takes only the free-run juice. Nothing from this wine is pressed. If the press never touches this Pinot, what are you tasting that a harder extraction would have blurred?

You are tasting the fruit that left the tank on its own. The house has narrowed its Pinot to two heritage selections and has worked with them for about twenty-five years. This bottle is the appellation wine, those selections, several Sonoma Coast sites in one glass. It is not one of the single-vineyard Pinots.

Antonio Galloni, at Vinous, scored this 2024 a 92. He found an uncommon elegance in it, bright and sculpted, with a saline mineral line that keeps the fruit from spreading out. The bottle on this page is that Pinot, at $80.

Night harvest on the coast

The fruit comes from several sites on the Sonoma Coast, and the pick starts after dark. Cool fruit holds its shape on the way to the cellar. The house called 2024 a classic year: budbreak on the familiar calendar, a warm summer, heat that arrived when it should, yields thinned by hand, and fermentations that ran smooth.

What they kept from that year was energy along with the flavor. The coast gives the saline line Galloni tasted. The night pick protects it. This is still the appellation bottling, a blend of those sites, not a vineyard name on its own label.

The photograph is budbreak in the Kistler vines. Read it as the start of a season at the house, not as a map of one coastal block. The wine in the bottle is the 2024 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir.

Open tops, then the free run

Destemmed berries go into open-top fermenters and start on the yeast that came in with them. The house watches the cap and keeps the fermentation moderately cool. When it is time to separate the wine, only the free run is kept. The press stays out of this cuvee. That is a costly way to work, and it is the reason the wine stays bright instead of broad.

Ten months in French oak follow, 38 percent of the barrels new. The wine is racked once, into tank, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. No fining to sand off the edges. No filter to quiet what the coast put there.

Six bottles are $480. Twelve are $960, and twelve ship free outside Hawaii and Alaska. Each bottle on this listing is $80.

Bright, sculpted, and saline

Galloni's 92 is the note to trust on this vintage: uncommon elegance, a bright and sculpted shape, and a saline tension that runs the length of the wine. Red fruit is there. So are chalk and dried herbs. The press never had a chance to blur them into something heavier. That is the glass.

Wine-Searcher, checked on 2026-10-29, put the U.S. market low at $74.52 and the average at $81.17. This listing is $80, the price held for the bottle. The corner above carries those three figures and the link to the public find page.

The photograph is the tank room, where this Pinot rests after its one racking. Ten months in barrel, then tank, then the bottle. Serve it a little cool, and give the fruit a minute in the glass.

The same cellar, a coastal Pinot

Steve Kistler and Mark Bixler founded the house in 1978. Jason Kesner has been president and winemaker through the recent vintages, after years in the vineyard and then the cellar. The Pinot program is the quieter half of a house known for Chardonnay, and Kesner has said they have been at Pinot since the early vintages, narrowing the work to two heritage selections about twenty-five years ago.

This 2024 is that work in an appellation bottle. Several Sonoma Coast sites. A night harvest. Free-run juice only. Ten months in barrel at 38 percent new oak. The photograph is Jason Kesner in the cellar, tasting, with the house bottles in front of him.

What you add is the 2024 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. Unfined, unfiltered, Galloni's 92, at $80.

Sliced duck, or a mushroom risotto

A bright coastal Pinot wants meat with a little sweetness at the edge, not a heavy sauce. Sliced roast duck does that. The skin is crisp, the breast is rosy, and the saline line in the wine cuts the richness without asking the fruit to disappear.

Wild mushroom risotto is the other plate. The earth in the mushrooms sits next to the herbs and the chalk in the glass, and the rice is rich enough for a wine that spent ten months in barrel. Both dishes leave the 2024 tasting like the coast.