Winery: Pangloss Cellars
Ownership: Pangloss is a Repris Winery brand. Repris has three brands: Repris, Pangloss and Texture. They are privately owned.
Winemaker: Their winemaker is Erich Bradley. We recently reviewed another winery where Erich is the winemaker, Sojourn Cellars, which is a private partnership venture for Erich. Erich is the winemaker for all three of Repris’ brands.
Location: A tasting room on the Sonoma Plaza in downtown Sonoma.
Types of Wines: Pangloss offers a nice selection of different wines. They have several pinot noirs and cabernet sauvignons each year, as well as a wide (and seemingly growing) set of other varietals and blends. They also offer a few of white wines.
Wine Price Range: $25 to $65
Production Size/Distribution: Overall production size is 5000 cases annually. They do not distribute nationally, selling mainly through the club and tasting room.
Tasting Experience Options: They offer both walk-in and appointment tasting options. Walk-in tasters have are invited to sit at the bar and taste a classic sampling of their wines for $25. If they are not too busy, this option may also be available in their lounge seating area.
Food and wine pairing tastings are available in the lounge for walk-ins or can be reserved ahead of time. They have an interesting selection of food and wine pairings ranging from $30 to $50. Each pairing flight includes three wines with food pairings which range from Cheese to charcuterie to caviar. Food and wine pairings are offered daily from 11 am to 1 pm. For more intimate and private tastings, they have a “cellar” room which is available only by appointment at $35 per person. The cellar tastings include a local cheese and charcuterie plate for each guest.
They are open Sunday – Thursday, 11 am – 6 pm, and Friday – Saturday, 11 am – 7 pm.
Tasting Experience Rating: 97 points*! Their tasting room and lounge are fun and hip!
Wine Rating: 92 to 96 points* (Especially amazing for the price points.)
The Good: The tasting bar and lounge are fun and the staff has great energy. We’ve tasted here many times and have always had a terrific time. This time we did our tasting with Falyn and she was great. She was personable and engaging and very attentive considering how many other guests she was helping at the same time. Our favorite person to taste with is Gerry. A really entertaining guy who seems to easily connect with everyone in the room. They have a wide selection of wines, especially amazing when you consider how small their overall production is. Though they are one of the few wineries that do not offer any wine discounts to their club members, we highly recommend you consider joining their club as some of their most amazing wines are club only wines and very small production. They do a white Rhone blend and a Chenin Blanc that are amazing (both are club only) and the types of whites that are not easy to find around this area. Their 2015 True North Pinot Noir was our favorite during this tasting (also club only). Even if you don’t join their wine club, their regular wines available to everyone are great quality.
The Bad: The only thing we feel needs to be pointed out as a “bad” part of tasting at Pangloss is that they don’t have much of a “story” as a winery. The owners seem to prefer staying out of the limelight so they don’t give any indication as to how the winery really came about nor the family’s background. They will share how the name Pangloss came about. It was named after Dr. Pangloss, the eternal optimist in Voltaire’s novel Candide. Other than that, they prefer to just let the wine speak for itself.
*Ratings are on a 100 point scale.
90 to 100 points=Outstanding
80 to 89 points=Good
70 to 79 points=OK (not good but not bad)
60 to 69 points=Wish we had gone elsewhere.
Below 60 points=Run fast in the other direction.