Still wine.

Vinomaker is always trying new wines on me blind, as in I haven't got a clue what the wine is.  Handed a glass of mystery wine recently, I had a sniff, I had a taste, I had another sniff.  Hmmm.  Nice aroma (couldn't fault that), pretty nice mouthfeel and flavour (all good there), but it did have a bit of a weird finish.  I was fairly sure that I hadn't had this wine before.  And I hadn't, at least not as a still wine.  The wine turned out to be a Pinot Noir Blanc: a white wine made from a black grape.  And why not?  Some of my very favourite wines on the planet are white wines made from Pinot noir grapes.  But with bubbles.
The Eclectic Wines, 2013 Pinot Noir Blanc (Los Carneros AVA), really opened up the more I tasted it, even the weirdness on the finish went away.  With a quick look at Eclectic's website, I learned that the winemaker is Mike Trotta, who is also the winemaker at Elyse (and I already love their wines).  Eclectic's winemaking philosophy is "less is more" which is quite refreshing when lots of Napa Valley wineries want to bombard the consumer with too much of this and that.  I also like that Eclectic state that they, Mike and his wife Wendy, are suffering from "chronic Cabernet fatigue" - love it!  Eclectic also make a Viognier that I must procure for Vinomaker to try.  Blind, of course.