I’ve noticed a lot of chatter on social media lately about “epiphany wines”—you know, the ones that make the light bulbs go off and set one on the path to wine geekdom. Obviously, lots of people in the wine trade have very specific memories of their epiphany wines, but I’ve got to hand it to George Levkoff: He didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk! Back in the mid-nineties, about 10 years into his career as a bond trader, Levkoff drank a Williams Selyem “Rochioli Vineyard” Pinot Noir at dinner and, within four years, left his job and moved to Northern California to study (and eventually make) wine.
Having been a longtime Williams Selyem customer who’d made several pilgrimages there, George convinced Burt Williams’ successor, Bob Cabral, to let him work the 1999 harvest. His apprenticeship continued through 2002, and in 2003, George Wine Company was born. Fast-forward a decade and a half and Levkoff is an assured Pinot Noir stylist in his own right, hand-crafting small-lot wines of finesse, perfumed aromatics, and great aging potential. Today’s live-wire 2015 was sourced from a vineyard planted by another iconic Pinot Noir family, the Martinellis, who first gave Levkoff access to fruit from the site in 2004. We were all deeply impressed by the energy and purity of this wine—epic backstory notwithstanding, we’re all about what’s in the bottle, and this 2015 is the real deal in every way. It is pretty, but also sneakily powerful, and at this point it is exceedingly rare: We can offer up to 6 bottles per customer until our allocation runs out!