SLO County winemaker is one of California’s rising stars, according to this 2019 list
A San Luis Obispo County winemaker recently landed on the San Francisco Chronicle’s 2019 Winemakers to Watch list.
Nicole Bertotti Pope, winemaker at Stolo Family Vineyards & Winery in Cambria, is one of six people to make the prestigious list, which ranks the rising stars of the West Coast wine scene. Other honorees in 2019 include winemakers from Berkeley, Placerville, San Francisco and Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
A Cal Poly graduate, Pope made the Winemakers to Watch list because she’s “defining a corner of the Central Coast as prime syrah territory,” Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley wrote in her Dec. 8 article.
According to Stolo’s website, Pope worked at Domaine Carneros in the Napa Valley before joining Talley Vineyards in Arroyo Grande as an enologist and, later, assistant winemaker. She came aboard Stolo as a winemaker in 2011.
The Chronicle article highlights Pope’s partnership with her husband, Lucas, who is Stolo’s vineyard manager.
“While he’s been pushing toward more sustainable farming practices, she’s experimented with the winemaking, honing the qualities that this distinctive place can offer,” the Chronicle said. “She has shown herself particularly adept at coaxing out a brawny, savory, highly aromatic expression of the site’s syrah.”
That’s not the only wine Nicole Bertotti Pope is known for. In addition to Stolo’s 2017 Estate Syrah and 2017 Hillside Reserve Syrah, the article showcases the Cambria winery’s 2017 Estate Chardonnay and 2017 Hillside Reserve Pinot Noir.
Stolo wines have been making waves in recent months.
The 2016 Stolo Vineyards Estate Reserve Chardonnay was one of about two dozen wines from San Luis Obispo County wineries featured in Wine Spectator’s Alphabetical Guide to California Chardonnay in July. It earned the highest ranking of any county wine with 91 points.
In 2018, Stolo’s 2016 Estate Syrah landed on Wine Enthusiast’s list of the Top 100 Wines of 2018.
This story was originally published December 23, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
