Flatiron Wines & Spirits SF

The term cult wine gets thrown around a lot in Napa Valley. Usually, it just means a wine is impossible to find and incredibly expensive. It conjures images of endless waiting lists, closed doors, and secondary market markups that defy all logic. But if you strip away the hype and the velvet ropes, true cult status is rarely an accident. It almost always traces back to a very specific piece. That is exactly the case with Scarecrow, an estate that didn't just invent a marketing gimmick, but actually inherited one of the most historically significant vineyards in American wine.

Denis Race was just thirteen years old when he began working his family's vines in the heart of Chablis. He took over a few years later and immediately began transforming it from an operation that sold all their fruit to large négociants into a classic domaine that bottles all their own production in the purest Chablis style conceivable: no oak, mineral-driven, high-toned.

When we think of Australian wine, our minds usually jump straight to the sun-baked Barossa Valley and its massive, inky Shiraz. But if you venture down to the cool, maritime fringes of Victoria, you'll find a completely different world. That’s where the father-and-son duo of Gary and Nick Farr have spent decades cementing their status as absolute royalty when it comes to Southern Hemisphere Pinot Noir. While their home estate in Geelong is already legendary, their Irrewarra project represents a thrilling leap into even more extreme, challenging terroir.