It was April 2021, and this was the first day out of the 14-day mandatory COVID-19 quarantine in Seoul. As I only had two bottles of wine with me during the quarantine — just as many as I could legally bring with me into Korea and there was no option for ordering alcohol into the room in the quarantine facility, I was desperate for some good wine. Staying at L7 Gangnam at Teheran-ro, I figured it out that the nearest wine shop to me — Wine Works — was at the Hyundai Department Store. So, this is where I went to explore.
It turned out that the shop had a great selection with a lot of familiar names mostly from the US and Spain, but I thought I wanted something less familiar and my eye was caught by a bottle of 2017 Belle Glos Eulenloch — a Pinot Noir from California. I must say that I’m not a big fan of Pinots, but I was in the explorer mood and the design of the bottle with its wax-dipped bottle neck attracted my attention. I never regretted choosing it, as it clearly was the bottle that has forever changed my opinion about what Pinot Noir can be. Thereafter I dropped by the supermarket to grab some cold cuts, Brie and a baguette and, voilà, my improvised dinner in the hotel room was ready.
Belle Glos is the project of Joe Wagner, grandson of Chuck Wagner — the man behind Napa’s iconic Caymus Vineyards. Where Caymus is known for its plush, approachable Cabernet Sauvignon, Joe carved out a different identity: a Pinot-focused label built around single-vineyard California sites, bottled under unmistakable coloured wax, and aimed squarely at wine drinkers who want more, not less, from their Pinot Noir. The Eulenloch Vineyard sits in the Los Carneros AVA, a cool, fog-hammered corridor along the northern edge of San Pablo Bay where persistent marine influence keeps temperatures restrained even as the rest of Napa bakes. What makes Eulenloch distinctive is its remarkably shallow clay soils — dense, water-retentive, and slow to drain — which force the vines to work harder and concentrate deeply. Wagner then extends hang times well past conventional harvest windows, extracting every gram of potential from the grapes before they come off the vine.
In the glass, the 2017 Eulenloch immediately signals that it intends to play by different rules. The colour is a genuinely deep ruby — close to opaque at the centre — a visual cue that something unusual is coming. On the nose: black cherry and blackberry, concentrated and jammy, with a distinct cola note that wraps everything in a kind of dark sweetness, underpinned by dark chocolate and a soft whisper of vanilla from oak. On the palate, it is full-bodied — aggressively so for a Pinot Noir — with velvety tannins, lively acidity, and a finish that runs well past the twelve-second mark. Wine Enthusiast awarded it 88 points, a score that feels slightly conservative given the wine’s sheer presence and technical execution. The improvised charcuterie board turned out to be an entirely functional pairing, and not by accident. The fatty marbling of the salami and the creamy richness of the Brie did exactly what good fat does to a bold red: it cut right through the wine’s velvety weight, creating a balance that neither component achieves alone.
What the 2017 Belle Glos Eulenloch represents is not a flaw in California’s character, but a deliberate and confident argument. This is not Burgundy, and it does not want to be. The restraint, the mineral delicacy, the translucent colour of a great Chambolle-Musigny — those are someone else’s priorities. Here, in the fog-cooled Carneros flatlands, the goal is concentration, depth, and a fruit profile so ripe and dark it almost stops being a Pinot Noir and becomes something entirely its own.
Pairs well with
