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The Tom Hill Archives
The Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium
presents the musings and reflections of Tom Hill. We think it's great that
Tom, who has sampled so many wines, has shared his tasting notes with us.
We do have, or have had for sale a few of the wines Tom writes about, and
we include a link to our stock page whenever it is a producer we carry
(but since the stock page is kept up-to-date and the wines are sold, don't
expect any but the newest of wines to show up in our stock!). Mostly though,
since we specialize in County of Santa Barbara Wine and Central Coast Wine,
we don't carry a lot of the wines Tom writes about. But we think it is
important that you be able to have an idea what they're like in case you
are planning to buy some somewhere, or have them in your own collection.
Enjoy.
Here are Tom's notes from May 29, 2002:
Stolpman Vineyards
Prior to the HdR'02, I arranged a visit to the Stolpman
Vineyard winemaking facility in the wine ghetto area of Lompoc. Several
yrs earlier, afore there were wines being produced under the Stolpman
label; I had walked the Stolpman vnyd itself with its vnyd manager, Jeff
Newton, one of the most highly regarded vnyd managers in the Valley. Just
by looking at the vnyd, you could see that a lot of attention to detail
was being given it. So I decided it was time to learn a bit more about
the Stolpman wines themself. The first Stolpman wines were made by Craig
MacMillan in another facility. Over a yr ago, Tom&Marylin Stolpman
hired Sashi Moorman, Adam Tolmach's assistant at Ojai, as their full-time
winemaker. Very smart move. And they rented space in the facility at Lompoc
where Brewer-Clifton, Ric Longoria, and several others make their wine.
Clearly, the Stolpmans were getting serious about the wines appearing under
their name. The vnyd itself has quite a range of varieties planted
to it. Many of the grapes are sold to other winemakers, like AdamTolmach
and Craig Jaffurs and Bob Lindquist. Thus, the Stolpman Vineyard name is
mostly associated with the Rhone varietals. But they also have planted
a bunch of Cabernet varieties, as well as Italian varietals. These are
not nearly as widely known. They should be. Joining me on this visit w/
Sashi was Larry Archibald, Howard&Rhoda Sherry, Jeff Pfohl, and
Shirene Le Clere. Also present was Sashi's assistant, Peter. After catching
up on Sashi's post-Ojai life since I had last seen him there several yrs
ago, we immediately went to work:
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