Home >Wine Store >Judd's Hill Pinot Noir

Strawberry, blood orange, Queen Anne cherry, cinnamon and rose petal.

Art and Bunnie Finkelstein abandoned careers in architecture and teaching to pursue their true passion in the Napa Valley. In 1979 they purchased a ranch outside of St. Helena and built Whitehall Lane Winery, eventually turning it into a very successful 30,000-cases-a year business. A decade later, wanting to get back to more hands-on wine production, and believing smaller is better, they sold Whitehall Lane and purchased a 14-acre hillside vineyard in Napa's eastern hills. Art designed and built a second winery, Judd's Hill, to focus on creating small lots (up to 3,000 cases annually) of premium handcrafted wines. Thanks to his reputation, Art was also sought out to help craft small lots of ultra-premium wines for others, and Custom MicroCrush was born. In 2004, son Judd and his wife, Holly, moved to Napa to help run the family businesses.

The spice box of flavor in this wine makes me long for my recipe of moist Pork Chops with Toasted Spice Rub and Apple Dressing. The flavors of the rub and the dressing mirror the complexities in the wine. Toasted fennel seeds, coriander seeds and peppercorns elevate the pork chops to delicious heights. Toasting, freshens spices, releases their oils and makes them more fragrant, as well as adding a new dimension of flavor. Serve with a side of my Olive Oil Braised Potatoes and I know all will be gloriously happy at your dinner table!

Art Finklestein has pursued a creative path all of his life, studying music, ceramics, cooking and architecture before discovering his true love of winemaking. He says, "to take grape vines, farm them to produce the highest quality fruit and then turn them into wine...well, this process gets me closer to and more appreciative of whatever higher power there may be out there than anything else. It has to be the most complete and challenging of all art forms. I continue to be amazed by it."