Varner, Pinot Noir, “Los Alamos Vineyard”

SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch doesn’t drink Italian wine exclusively, and has been recommending this outstanding value-priced California Pinot to anyone who’ll listen.When I first moved to California, in 2009, the Varner wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains were some of the first (of many) Californian wines I bought in my new job as wine director at Quince in San Francisco. It wasn’t the amiable Varner brothers, Bob and Jim, who showed me the wines that first time, but instead a San Francisco sommelier keen on challenging my Euro-centric prejudices, developed over more than a decade in New York City restaurants. My main beef with California—if you could call it a beef; it was more of a quibble—wasn’t with the quality of the wines but with the prices. It’s still a quibble, to be honest, as I have a hard time getting as jazzed about $20-$30 Californian wines as I do French, Spanish, and of course Italian wines in that same range. That price point is simply not California’s whe